Slashdot Mirror
LinuxOne Lite: First Looks
Sensei^ from LinuxNewbie sent us their
Review of LinuxOne. Basically, the distribution is "A Badly Repackaged Mandrake". Read this review: the list of problems is amusing, and it will cause your disgust of the corporate entity known as LinuxOne to climb to a new level.
Save your money for ANDOVER.NET!
The True Story of LinuxOne
Bill: Ted, dude, Im Bored
Ted: Yeah, dude, all the babes are gone
Bill: Dude! Your right!
Ted: So, like, dude, what do you wanna do?
Bill: Dude, lets, like start a company
(Stoopid guitar thing)
Ted: Dude! I like it! A linux company
Bill: Yeah, dude. But we wanna be, like, number one
Ted: Dude! Lets call it LinuxOne
(Guitar)
Bill: Dude!
Ted: Dude!
Bill: Dude!
Ted: Dude!
Bill: Dude! We can take a copy of RedHat and stamp our name on it
Ted: Dooood! Cool. Then we can have an IPO.
(Stupid guitar thing)
Bill: Yeah, dude. But you know what dude? Instead of having stocks in our IPO, well have babes
Ted: Dude! Yeah, Itll be like a Initial Party Offering
br> Bill: Dude!
Ted: Dude!
Bill: Dude!
Ted: Dude!
Speaking of IPO... I went to check out their stock on yahoo... By mistake, I searched for LINX (The LOL symbol) from the main page...
Give it a try, It would seem that they have a "side business"..
heheheh
You might want check this out http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW19991004S0009
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and is 100 percent fatal.
Factually incorrect, as many biological organisms reproduce asexually (bacteria, virii, fungus, etc).
don't change the subject, buddy! (-10, not even close to relevant)
The real question is, what can be done to keep this from happening?
investors know investing, but they don't know linux. Are there enough people out there who only know "linux" and not the differences between VA Linux and LinuxOne who are going to buy L1 stock? if LINX falls big, it will make the news, and it will probably be covered in the same manner, "Linux Stock Falls!" which will be a very bad thing for the community.
We need to make sure EVERYONE knows that anyone can sell linux, and nobody has the specific rights to it.
you're nuts.
Wait a minute there, I'm confused. -Another- initial software order? I'm no English professor but I always thought "initial" meant only the first, and ruled out a second or later "initial" by definition. Maybe that's what separates them from the rest. They can do multiple "initial" sales. AFAIK their distro runs -two- init processes as well. That would separate them from the rest of the pack. Maybe they are on to something and have discovered how to multiplex "first." I wouldn't be surprised if they came out with a "second" or even "third" Initial Public Offering.
Indeed.
That was my way to get linux,
For anyone with a cd burner and a fast connection it is the obvious choice. Hopefully, most heathens won't look beyond redhat or caldera when they think Linux - and while that is bad, LO is worse!
Whatever their faults, redhat or caldera are better than these L.O.sers!
DUDE!
Arrogant tit! Easy to hide behind AC status isn't it ;)? As for trying to get "+1 informative", don't judge everybody else by your own standards - most people aren't so self-serving and lacking in altruism. Besides, I think you'll see that the post original started at 2, without any need for a +1 informative - it said: (Score:2), not (Score:2, Informative).
This is a great example of one of the problems with open source. There is no set direction, which is good and bad. It's bad because every developer wants to create and not fix. Linux would be able to progress much faster if there weren't 50 distro's and 25 windows managers. If there could only be like the top 5 distros and the top 4 windows managers then this would greatly help Linux. You could too many Generals and not enough privates. Alot of these distros and windows managers take away important dev cycles that could be spent on projects already in place. No need to reinvent the wheel. Just a ac's opinion.
A lame review of a lame product... Am I to believe that Debian swiped Mandrake's ASCII penguin too? I think not... besides... (while we're on the subject...) Wasn't the first Mandrake a RH clone with KDE and TT font support? hmmm
Could somebody please post a list companies I have to hate to be accepted by the moderators?
Sure would help. Thanks
Your a blithering idiot. Yea its a lame product and NO its not the same as mandrake or Redhat. Mandrake and Redhat and Debian and all those other fun Distributions EMBRACED linux with open arms with no real intention of making money, or not the amounts they are anyways. And What Ends up happening is BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEPING MOTHER BLEEPING BLEEP HOLES. Steal and Reselll the linux distrobution to make a BLEEP Profit. And there is no BLEEPING way you can say otherwise. If they were in it to support linux then they would use Linux. Their first webpage was designed in microsoft word and I have a WS_FTP.LOG file from their webserver it was in linuxone.net/images/WS_FTP.LOG (no longer there) that looked like this C:\linuxone\newdesign\logo.jpg --->/var/www/images/logo.jpg Ok so if they were Linux advocates they sure as BLEEP wouldnt be using Images. Do you know what i do for a living? I provide Technical support for linux. And i will tell you this much. if i get single linuxone questions im laughing and hanging up the phone. I have also installed it. And let me say that it is utter SHIT.
Talk about offtopic... we really need a "not in response to a story" board...
Dammit they need a proofreading thing I meant by "wouldnt' be using images" as "wouldnt be using images Created in windows or even using windows"
Yes, and how many of them will get $500,000 from their major client, as LinuxOne intends? I expect they're all far more likely to do so. I wouldn't believe any promise from LOL at all.
I think the people at Slashdot hate the fact that some people might make some money off the oen source craze without actually contributing to it.
This is quite a hypocritical stance because it was the exact same situation for Slashdot. Slashdot doesn't produce any original content, it links to other stories and basically sells the output of its readers.
What has Rob Malda done for OS recently? Nothing... even the source to slashdot is closed (remember release early, release often).
It's all pretty lame, and reeks of junior high. If LinuxOne is a joke, then it isn't deservant of even being posted as a news story.
I don't think VALinux's hardware business is any sort of contrast...take a look at what they sell...commodity PC bits and pieces with linux pre-installed. admittedly, the components are all high quality parts, but nonetheless, anyone with a philips head screwdriver and a RedHat CD can do what VALinux does...
Microsoft Linuxone Corel Netscape FSF
No... They should make an upgrade called LMAO:
Linux (Millennium Additions) One.
Strange. I'd be more inclined to sell 'em both, buy an ultra 2, and run linux on it. Best of all worlds.
they are the definition of a slimeball company. they are releasing a product that another company created, and still can't get it right.
Perhaps the BBB could do something about linuxone. They are obviously a crooked company.
Perhaps someone who lives near them might notice their place of business burning down? I dunno.
Maybe LinuxOne is secretly owned by Micro$oft, and they are trying to build a bad name for linux. Not likely, but I wouldn't put the tactic past them, either.
this is an outrage! you sir have trolled me into making this post. when will you trollers ever stop trolling?
Posts shorter than a few characters automatically are moderated -1, this can allow them to go as low as -2!
Set your "short-comment penalty" to 500,000 characters and knock all the karma whores down a notch!
Others will follow, and this could very well be the downfall of the GPL.
Yes, VHS and NTSC are actually quite annoying to me everytime I use them.
Image, PR, marketing.
They need to figure out how to convince someone to buy their product. Either they need to innovate in pure marketing, or they must convince those of us that judge based on merit and Redhat, Caldera and Corel already dominate in the former category.
At least Mandrake, even when it started out, added something by way of their packaging.
Yes, this is the real reason the slash code has not been released yet. It's so ugly that it violates the "non-obfuscated" clause in the GPL. :)
Actually, if they don't get their install working, it might be called "WTF?"
It's not. It's just the binaries in a package that gets repackaged to a "binary" RPM.
alrighty. time to start moderating these trolls into oblivion. woo hoo!!!
shut up.
What a blatant attempt to get the +1, Informative. How sad. Not like everyone doesn't know that ALREADY.
I don't know if this is still true but it was when. I looked at their FTP site the other day. (Couldn't get through just now, probably getting /.'ed.)
Anyway, the RPM PGP key file in their FTP site contained Red Hat's key. The RPM's stated that the build host was something at mandrakesoft which obviously wouldn't be signed with RH's key.
and men no longer get 50% less pay than women,
You need to work on your math. If women get 60 cents and men get 40 cents, then women get paid 50% more than men, but men get paid 1/3 less than women. If men got paid 50% less than women, they would only make 30 cents.
... but at least they haven't posted a banner ad on /. -yet.
Why are you complaining? I was the one who posted it?
--auntfloyd
I just love how problems installing or using an OS (or distribution) that is disliked are automatically the problem of the OS/dist., but if the OS (or distribution) is liked, then it must be the fault of the user. Also, doesn't this highlight the inherent problem with free software? One company puts a lot of effort into making a decent product only to have it repackaged and sold by a greedy corporation. It'd be nice if everyone was an informed consumer and knew which one to buy, but that just isn't reality.
I've been using a "badly repackaged" version of Linux for about a year now. I'm up to version 4.1 or something. It rocks! Has all the latest user detriment inhancements and supports all hardware created before the Osborne I. Even emulates an IBM 360 with the proper software/hardware/cables. Yes I love it, so take that you Red Hat lovers. Why don't you just go make those guys even richer from selling the work of people who really love what they do! This post is open source, do with it what you will, just remember where you got it.
for linux to be useful to me, it has to have broad-based support. if companies like L1 can erode consumer confidence in Linux, support for it as a whole will fail.
while you may not care, you sure as hell don't have a right to tell me not to. Linux One is very bad for Linux, and anybody who thinks beyond the next 10 minutes can see the potential disaster this company could bring.
Great... I'll post my CV here sometime as well, but more to the point.. No need...just say "sorry for being an ignorant pinhead" and go back in the corner for a while.
-2
I hate to bust your bubble, but -Many- companies repackage products and sell them under their own brand name. Car parts comanies are notorious for this. Illegal? No. Immoral? Depends on the business.
a duh.
So, my point is, every distro has to start somewhere. It remains to be seen if LinuxOne is just mooching or if they actually have something interesting to add to Linux. Doesn't look like it right now, though.
"Solaris - making your million-dollar hardware feel like a PDP-8 over a 75-baud line!"
"Solaris - forget asteroids through pipettes; we've redefined 'suck' altogether!"
"Solaris - proving again that bad designs refuse to die"
"Solaris - we'd love to be IRIX but we can't; we'd love to be linux but we won't"
Come on, Solaris people are worse than Linux people sometimes. All operating systems suck. Yours sucks a hell of a lot more than it needs to. Solaris on x86 suffers from the shittiness of the platform; Solaris on SPARC can't make that excuse. Solaris on SPARC is a criminal act punishable by death. If you want a machine that slow, I'll gladly trade you a shitty peecee w/linux for your beautiful Ultra {^5,10}.
Slashdot doesn't have an anti-Solaris conspiracy. Sun does. Get over it.
I wonder if any of Slashdot's massive drive to see that LinuxOne is a failure stems even a little bit from the fact that it seems like Slashdot itself missed the big IPO gravy train. Instead of making the effort to go public themselves, they hitched their wagon to a very questionable Andover.net star. After a 52-week high of 90 in early December, Andover.net stock now trades near its 52-week low of 30.25 -- it's at 31.375 as I type this -- and only seems destined to go lower. It's possible that it might even end up below its opening price before any of the Slashdot guys are able to sell their stock, which would be a snafu of major proportions considering today's IPO craze.
Of course they wouldn't admit it, but I don't think it's so far-fetched that they're taking out their frustration at their own bad decisions upon LinuxOne. That green-eyed lady can be one powerful mama.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
(Sheesh. Somebody with the squishdot source want to open a new site?)
Why do you think they're not releasing the source? So you *can't* make a better site! That's the whole point. Don't have time? My ass. Malda and Hemos are millionaires, and Andover does all the hard work now, anyway. What the hell do they do? Read some stories and post the worst ones?
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
my mom is dead.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
No, they're selling a shitty, half-assed mandrake-ripoff distribution cause they're concerned about the greater good of the linux community.
I'm sick of this. There are more than enough distros!!! we don't need any more companies
making(?) more of the same!
we need more companies making apps and stuff FOR Linux.
Chalito.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
apple. Which makes some sense.
Unfortunately, free Solaris is gratis and not libre. Sigh.
I just hope that Sun can wake up and understand that the gratis part is just a pleasant attribute and nothing more, while Open Source or Software Libre is everything.
Congrats to GMontag for finding a way to get an important story posted!
Linux One cannot possibly pull off this IPO in the face of all the negative press. They'll probably take down the whole linux market with them (if the linux crash doesn't happen on its own first).
Investors must be asking themselves how any of these companies will make money. RHAT is valued at $15B today. That means that they need to earn $150M/year just to have a very high p/e ration of 100.
LinuxCare wants to make money selling support. How many of you guys would pay a dime for support when you can get all the information you'll ever need for free.
You programmer/investors out there: think about the earnings. That is what the stock market wants. Look at IOmega. Everybody bought the stock because the liked zip drives, not thinking about the earnings. They got taken to the cleaners when the hype ended.
I hate to rain on everybody's party, but I'd rather not see us programmers take a big hit in the wallet. Let's let the wall street types do that.
linuxone does thier best, everyone praises jesus in their own way. linuxone is just trying to do it by fleecing the day traders.
is Jesus your personal savior? click here
Fool.com has a good story about LinuxOne that really gives the lie to their whole IPO scam.
I agree that the market will decide. I get tired of all the anti-capitalist /. readers that bitch about how some corporation is tainting some intellectually pure technology. None of us would have the luxury of even reading this - if we did not live in a market driven world.
Three Distros for the sys admins under the sky,
Seven for the kernel hackers in their chairs of stone,
Nine for the Linux IPOs doomed to die,
One for the Lord Linus on his Transmeta Throne,
In the land of Linux where the trolls lie.
One Distro to rule them all, One Distro to find them,
One Distro to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Three Distros for the sys admins under the sky,
Seven for the kernel hackers in their chairs of stone,
Nine for the Linux IPOs doomed to die,
One for the Lord Linus on his Linux Throne,
In the land of Slashdot where the trolls lie.
One Distro to rule them all, One Distro to find them,
One Distro to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
In the land of Slashdot where the trolls lie.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Three Distros for the sys admins under the sky,
Seven for the kernel hackers in their chairs of stone,
Nine for the Linux IPOs doomed to die,
One for the Lord Linus on his Linux Throne,
In the land of Slashdot where the trolls lie.
One Distro to rule them all, One Distro to find them,
One Distro to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
In the land of Slashdot where the trolls lie.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
If companies are going to be spending a half a million dollars on linux, and end up getting a product like "LinuxOne OS" which, according to this review doesn't work at all, they will be very unhappy with "linux" not with linux one.
So FUCKING what?
Really, will this affect your life one bit? NO! You will be every bit as free to use Linux as you've ever been. You will still find great support channels. You will still have access to all the source. You will still be free to browbeat your friends, neighbors, and children into using it. In short, your rights and freedoms will not be affected in the slightest.
Advocacy is one thing. Trying to restrict someone else's right to, within the confines of the licenses, distribute software in a way that is less than effective, is fundamentally anti-freedom. Your personal fear that "the product I advocate might get a bad name" is not justification for restricting someone else's freedom.
So don't buy stuff from these scumbags. Tell others to do the same. But don't whine about the harm they do as if it's the end of the world. It just isn't.
Enough LinuxOne stories already. We hate them. Fine. Everything that can be said already has been. Stop beating the pulp that was once a horse.
Fact: I didn't say anything about slowness on x86, just that the x86 platform sucks. Which everyone knows. No Open Firmware, or anything close. 16-bit init code. IDE. Need I go on?
Furthermore, why do you call Solaris slow?
Because it is?
It scales very well.
Check out the HOARD project and see just how well it scales. And that's just multi-thread memory allocation. So it runs on 64-processor machines. So does UltraLinux. Big deal.
The file system is very fast. Maybe you find CDE slow?
The filesystem is fair-to-middlin at best. UFS is a basic Unix filesystem that could easily have come out of a university textbook. It can't touch xfs for streaming media applications and it can't touch ext2 for overall performance. Sure, it's faster than FAT, but that says nothing.
Actually, I don't find CDE at all. I refuse to pollute any system I'm responsible for with it. Thanks for nothing, HP.
Sadly enough I'm still willing to give this company a chance to prove itself as adding some value. Maybe they need more time. Maybe they have good intentions but grossly underestimated how much work is involved in putting together a distro. Maybe they have something special in development. I still can't believe this is all they have to offer -- it's just too ridiculous to believe.
Modulo the fact that we can't send Linus' lawyers after them, Linus has, after all, explicitly blessed binary modules (with the warning about what might happen when the kernel changes, but caveat hax0r). Linus's copyright only extends as far as the kernel, so he has no say over what happens in user space.
Most of the Linux distributions offer some binary-only stuff, even if it's just Netscape. Even Debian includes non-free options, I believe, although they're treated as an appendage rather than as part of the distribution per se. TurboLinux is quite explicit about offering proprietary value-add, and they're unquestionably offering something real.
As for whether Linus should withhold use of the trademark, it's his call, but LinuxOne does appear to be in the Linux business, however tenuously (as opposed to Serious Domains, which was strictly trying to capitalize on the name, with no pretense at actually offering Linux-related goods or services). Withholding the trademark from LinuxOne puts him in the business of judging particular uses of Linux, which is a rather slippery slope. I'd be very surprised if he goes after someone offering a distribution (however cheesy) with legal use of the Linux kernel (respecting the GPL on the kernel source proper) unless they seriously abuse the trademark, maybe by saying that Linus endorses their particular flavor.
But if LinuxOne's installation is as painful as it sounds, either they're not going to go very far or they'll quickly find out that it would actually help them to add real value.
Hal Duston
>As I understand it, they may (like Pacific HiTech) have some ability to provide tech support in native languages to certain asian communities. Or FAQs or HowTos. Any of those might be useful.
In case you didn't know, Pacific HiTech has changed its name to TurboLinux.
Do you think they can sell it for less than 2.99? That is what Linux Mall charges to send you a CD of any of the major distributions.
Dastardly
Okay, I know this message might fit the technical definition of "troll" given that it expresses an opinion without supporting it with any arguments, but how can this be labelled a troll when the opinion expressed matches those of most (yes, a generalization -- deal :) of the folks around here? Just a thought :)
Read my stuff.
I think it would be a good idea for the likes of Mandrake and Redhat to take a look at this, find the places where LinuxOne plant their name in distribution and bury some code to force a crash or shutdown if it's found. Doesn't sound to me like these guys have got the brains to track this sort of thing down if the real distros are sneaky about it.
Macka
--thi
--thi
I guess this means the public-at-large is less intelligent than the PHB's. Scary thought.
Educational sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
(Sheesh. Somebody with the squishdot source want to open a new site?)
/usr/local/slash directory onto his sources page. That's all we ask.
It's been tried. Guess what? For practical purposes, the current version of Slashdot is CLOSED SOURCE! That's right, the only source they made available last I checked was Slash 2 and pre-3, both of which were only marginally useable. I HOPE someone forks off Slash development and manages it responsibly, because Rob "Mr. OpenSource" Malda talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.
"Waitaminute", you'll say: "Rob doesn't get paid to do support his source". Not directly, no... but he makes his money off the OS community, and even among big soulless corporations, it's customary to throw us a bone now and then. So nevermind 'support'... you would think that the least he could do would be to practice what he preaches, and put a fsking tarball of the scripts in his
Then, the folks over at http://projects.is.asu.edu/mai lman/listinfo/slash-help will be able to fix all his broken code, document it, and redistribute it like they did version "pre-3".
Okay, so that strayed off topic, but it needed to be said. Rob, stop holding out on us please.
The untapped niche for Linux1 are projects that you want to fail. Really hate a manager? Convince them to buy the distro. Really hate your in-laws? Convince them to invest in LO.
Otherwise funny post, but... Jesus Christ. Why do people have such difficulty getting foreign names right?
It's not such a complicated name anyway. Look.
Chan.
Dra.
Sekh.
Ar.
Repeat with me: Chandrasekhar.
See, wasn't so hard, now was it?
Now let's try another one. Repeat with me: Schrödinger...
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
try it out and then:
http://www.linuxone.net/support/evaluate.html
True, but it misses the point. The point is that we don't want to let the failure of a 'Linux product' tarnish the reputation of Linux itself, or the open-source community as a whole.
Certainly anyone is free to install (or not) any distro they please, but is it in our best interest to stand aside like Kirk obeying the Prime Directive? I prefer to help them avoid the mistake in the first place and thereby win a friend, than to give them the 'freedom' to fuck up and gain an enemy. This is supposed to be a *community* after all, right?
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
...are not likely to download a huge CDrom image and burn a Linux CD.
...ANY of them will be thousands of times better than LO appears to be...
For the most part you're probably right, but I know a guy who was about to do just that. (And in fact I did it myself when I installed my first Linux distro.) He is a longtime Win user who is otherwise pretty computer-savvy and was interested in learning about Linux. I quickly burned him a copy of RH6.1 to try out. If he likes that, maybe I'll give him Debian too.
Indeed!!
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Recently, I've joked with my friends that I should start a .com, offer "linux solutions to real world problems" and quickly announce an IPO. Looks like someone just beat me too it.
However, LinuxOne, in the future it would probably be easier to rip off one of those 2 floppy disk distro's. That way you wouldn't be pressured to rewrite and documentation.
The market, in the long run, given perfect access at no cost in real time to all information, will choose the most profitable distro over other, not as profitable, distros.
The market doesn't give a shit about profitability, if anything increased competition will force profits down if anything else.
But then again you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Come back and post after you've read an introductory economics text. I can recommend one for you if you want.
(And to this crap like that post get marked insightful...)
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Were you able to hit the site and get information? Was it available to you regardless of its aesthetics?
run by a webmaster with a hotmail account
So the webmaster published their email address and is available to be contacted, which is a lot more than I can say for other higher-profile sites out there in their genre. Did you try to contact the webmaster? Did they respond?
A slashdot reader has called the number on the website before and woken the website's owner out of bed (it's his home #)
So someone called a contact number and someone answered? How is this a bad thing? How many customer support or sales lines have you called and were put on hold or not answered at all? So what if it is someone's home? One could call that dedicated. He was woken up? Is it possible that the person answering the phone is NOT in same time zone as the caller? Wouldn't 24 hour phone access be desired?
That doesn't sound like someone who has $500,000 to pay for software, now does it?
I have a grandfather that was a medical doctor who had a private practice for over 20 years. He wears the same pair of pants every day of the week and drives a beat-up old Ford truck. By appearances one could say that he doesn't have much money.. but he donates huge amounts of cash to charitable organizations, invests heavily in the stock market, has huge trust funds for his offspring and their offspring, etc. Are you so sure you can tell how much money someone can spend by appearances or by what they choose to spend their money on, if at all?
LinuxOne maybe a huge sham, but I think you need to re-work your judgments and get some facts. Scary stuff indeed: to be judged without reasoning.
Speak truth to power.
Mine and his comments weren't about the LinuxOne prospectus, but about the orignial commenter's examples of "scary stuff" regarding website aesthetics, phone support availability, webmaster email account snobbery and what people choose to spend money on.
/. tells me to think. I am, however, an advocate for sound reasoning. Let's make better arguments people.
I believe my points on judging people without reasoning were lost on you. Perhaps you would take the Linux community's "truth" about LinuxOne automatically without investigating the details?
Have you ever been inside a wal-mart? Flea market tables selling bargin bin merchandise.. yet they are an economic powerhouse. Can you really judge so much by appearances?
Investigating the details indeed. LinuxOne never had a chance with any of you, did they? I'm not a LinuxOne advocate.. I think it and their prospectus is a sham, but not because of what
Speak truth to power.
On a minor note could someone create say an obfusicated version of the source code for release and then release the code so that it would take just a little longer to get ahold of?
No. Term #3 of the GPL specifies that "the source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." So you are free to write your own obfuscated code by hand, but passing it through some obfuscation program is not allowed.
Brilliant. What a load of crap gets posted on /., and yet something like this gets passed by?
I guess the story about the folding lego was more important.
(Sheesh. Somebody with the squishdot source want to open a new site?)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The install is exactly like, if not, RedHat's. The only difference was that the RedHat name never appeared.
From the GPL:
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty...
...
If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty)...
Quick questions:
Is there any place in LinuxOne Lite where they removed these notices?
Is there any place in LinuxOne Lite where they replaced "copyright redhat" or "copyright mandrake" with "copyright linuxone"?
If so, the appropriate party should sue their asses off.
Geez... it was strait out of MS Word!
Now at least they have a semi professional looking page. They now need to have someone that speaks native english re-word it.
Maybe some of you linux guru's are interested in working for them. They have a few job openings.
I personally would be embarassed to do such... hehehe
Funny, maybe, but true; here's the URL.
I don't see any reason why they couldn't have closed-source parts in it, as long as these are not derivatives of eg. GPL software. Distributions can come with any software, Linus has nothing to say to that. If it has binary-only modules to the kernel that is AFAIK OK to Linus as long as it doesn't require recompiling/modifying the kernel.
I doubt, therefore I may be.
The point is not that they have broken any rules and such. Its just that they are not adding anything at all. The point the article is making is that you may as well just get hold of Red Hat or Mandrake and not bother with LinuxOne's product.
Why did a company come out with a rip off of Red Hat that is worse than the original?
"DNA is God's contribution to the Open Source movement"
...because they're one of the nominees for the Best Newbie Helper Beanie award.
Ooh! Quick! Give me 10,000 shares of LINX!
---
yep .. and i dont doubt mandrake is still hurt by that image. personally i stay the hell away from distros who just repackage themselves in different flavours without adding anything new. if they havent gone thru the learning curve of adding anything new, why should i trust em ?
[rant]
Why is it people always say "Solaris x86 is slow cause, uh, the architecture sucks."? Without any facts to back that claim up (ie, what about the platform is so fucking bad), it's nonsense.
[/rant]
Furthermore, why do you call Solaris slow? Because it's cool to say "slowlaris"? It scales very well. The file system is very fast. Maybe you find CDE slow?
Hands in my pocket
I agree that they could be for real, and not just sucky, money grubbing, soulless scum. I pondered this myself. I don't think they do deserve our trust, however.
If you recall, or would like to research the past articles about this on Slashdot and other news sources, the CEO of LinuxOne has a pretty shady past. Also, they filed for an IPO practically as soon as they could. Mr. CEO's last offering went down to something like 15 cents a share after it was clear that his company wasn't worth anything... Now, he has a new company, with Linux plastered all over it.
In an unrelated note,
if every distro changed KDE in the ways you describe, I really don't think there would be anything wrong with that. Different color scheme?... um..okay, so what? Different sized icons? There goes the user friendly, consistent interface. I think there is room for a green shaded KDE in the world.
Juln
ummm.. er.. hmmm., uh
yeah.
Juln
you know, they are randomly selected from readers, not just some moderation oligarchy like some forum. but if you want a list,
hate:
microsoft (of course)
sun (not open source)
red hat (over rated)
slashdot (not as good as ther old days)
LinuxOne (see attached story)
AOL (heathen heaven)
Any Company
hey, even GNU
um.. hate everyone, but sound like you know a lot, and quote peoples statements in detailed rebuttals designed to make them look utterly uniformed and foolish, maybe make them look like subversive microsoft-hired trolls.
That should get you to be popular, and then you get the treasured Karma (r) of Slashdot. Don't forget, its $5000 a month paid to you for every 25 karma points! thats why Slashdot moderation is SO IMPORTANT!@
Juln
BTW, waited until this appeared:
2000-01-24 20:33:04 Sun to announce free Solaris 8 source (articles,sun) (rejected)
before posting this news.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The article refrenced said they may be releasing free source code too. Take a look at it.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Actually, when that ticker says LINX and the market notification of IPO pops up, it is highly likely that a number of non-techies are going to shove a lot of dollars into it real fast.
...
Never underestimate the intelligence of the average day trader, nor that of your average stock broker.
Hey, it says Linux, right? So it must be good
Will in Seattle
Actually, I knew that Pacific HiTech had changed to TurboLinux, but spaced on their distro's new name. I don't use it, I use gasp Red Hat.
The point is, nonetheless, that if we are to think of things that LinuxZeroPointFive could do better, it would probably lie in the other language support area.
But it looks like they're using Debian and RedHat distros, awkwardly disguised as their own, so I think they really aren't serious about doing anything than taking profit on the PenguinMania in the current stock market bubble.
Will in Seattle
Seriously, how many people bought software, especially when they were just starting out, which never quite worked?
...
We just don't want to admit that we, too, once were clueless newbies. Me, I'm always a newbie at heart
Will in Seattle
As I understand it, they may (like Pacific HiTech) have some ability to provide tech support in native languages to certain asian communities. Or FAQs or HowTos. Any of those might be useful.
I still think it's a scam, but who knows?
Will in Seattle
Seriously, how many of those other distros will be offered in Asian language wrapping, as I recall LinuxOne intends? Pacific HiTech, perhaps, but what else?
It's all marketing - Bill G didn't win by good code or efficient code - it was marketing.
Still think LinuxOne is IPO hype-fodder.
Will in Seattle
What people really don't like (myself included) is that people can make insane ammounts of money from something that is inferior. If it was good I would say that they deserve all the money (maybe). However seriously if you did half-assed work at your professional job how long would you be employed? Unless you know hypnotism not a very long time.
:)
That's the beauty of a market driven economy, hell, short of motivation there's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing. The problem though is that the market will decide who wins and who loses. All that money you made on your IPO could be gone in a year or two if the market decides that your product is crap.
Go Capitilism!
It's probably just netscape's default .tar.gz binary packaged up with scripts to turn it into an RPM. I'll bet my left sock that the source to Netscape 4.61 is not avalible.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Which is more reasonable? Taking stuff written in a prospectus as truth automatically, or being skeptical and investigating the details. Apparently, you would prefer the former.
--
PanDuh!
Once I started reading about LinuxOne's corporate M.O. I had some real strong deja vu... I worked for a Taiwanese-led startup a few years back, and the shady dealings of LinuxOne come as no surprise. In fact, LinuxOne is cooperating with my former employer on some drivers... see http://www.maxspeed.com/index.html/pr/pr_11-12-99_ linuxone.html The group of executives I knew (and who no doubt are in contact with Dr. Wun C. Chiou of LinuxOne) was trying to apply some pretty naive (and probably Asia-centric) tactics. I didn't really catch wind of anything illegal (well, OK, I think the one time a manager offered me "medicine to help me work longer" might have been over the line) but it's no big stretch to think their associates aren't entirely on the up-and-up.
I don't have any facts as far as (application) speed, but have you ever tried to set up printing on Solaris? I mean, things that should be simple are way too difficult. That's why my Ultra 5 makes a nice X-window to the Dell/Linux server.
And you get to keep your socks :) I found a cd with the SRPMS on it and it was a repackager. I wasn't sure at first, but figured SRPM? Must be source. Well, that solves that.
treke
I don't know if this is completely true... RedHat has a file labeled netscape-4.61-12.src.rpm. I'm not sure, I think it's a safe guess that this is the source for netscape communicator 4.61. I'd try building it, but I don't have time for a 40 meg dl at 3 k/s. Anyone who wants it can find it on your 6.1 source cd, or the SRPMS directory on any redhat mirror that has the source
treke
ummm no....
why should one entity not be allowed to distribute a distro w/ binary only parts while all of the other ones have been allowed to do that?
(think b4 netscape became open source, every distro still had netscape in it, and the latest netscape isn't open source yet either (netscape 5 is supposed to be what comes out of mozilla.org right?))
Need a Catering Connection
Good point, and I think this article was written to steer newbies from this distro, I mean look at the domain name of the review website? Linux.
I think that it would be wise for most sites to link to this review (or atleast write their own) genuinely pointing out the faults of LinuxOne. That is the way the community can combat LinuxOne from ruining Linux's "reputation".
"OTOH, shorting is just borrowing shares, so if I want to borrow shares from somebody outside the normal channels, how can they regulate that?"
I'd be very very careful. They (the SEC) can and does regulate many things common sense would tell you they couldn't. And they don't fool around you could go to jail for a long time if you piss them off. I'm not sure of the particulars of this case, but the general warning still applies.
Darn, the italic tag in the first paragraph above didn't take.
That's because Redhat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and Mandrake (and Corel) actually contribute to Linux. LinuxOne relies on someone else to create a product that they can put their sticker on. On top of that, they do a make-shift job of that too.
/.ers are upset.
If they are a truly serious company, they will understand one thing: competition. To make a competing product, it must be better at atleast one thing than everyone elses'. Redhat has support. Corel as ease of use. Caldera ties Microsoft up in court. And so on. Plus every one of these has full time staff dedicated to improving their distro and creating GPL programs.
In another words, name me at least one reason why I should use LinuxOne instead of Mandrake.
But that's only one argument... there's another. A lot of good programmers work late into the night for free, only so that they can make their contribution to the Linux community. To see someone attempt IPO for millions while doing minimal amounts of work is insulting. That is why
Ozwald
If they have not added any value to the distro they are based on, then why should I use their distro? I looked at Mandrake 5.2 when it came out and about the only thing they added was KDE. That wasn't enough extra value for me to switch from Redhat. When I looked at Mandrake 6.1 they seemed to have a commitment to KDE and to having a Pentium optimized system. *THAT* was enough added value to switch to Mandrake.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Well, sure, it allows it... but that's not the point. Not giving credit where it is due is kinda low, even if it is allowed.
The Linux sites have already declared Redhat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and Mandrake the winners and LinuxOne to be the loser.
That's because they actually contribute something to the user community. All LinuxOne has done is take someone else's product, rip their name out of it and slap their own sticker on it. Why use a cheap knock-off when you can own the original, made by a company that is committed to serving the community? From all appearances, LinuxOne is just trying to cash in on the Linux hype, and there's really no way to respect that.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Is it just me, or does he sound really bitter?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Did you go to the Power Source web site?
The contact e-mail address at the bottom is a *Hotmail* addr.
The persons involved with that site haven't come in contact with $500,000.00 in their entire exigious lives.
Wait wait! LinuxOne wouldn't lie to us...
-Spazimodo
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
Just out of curiosity, has the GPL been legally tested in court yet? Last I checked (and it wasn't that long ago) it hadn't, although there was talk of a test case.
/slashdot-1.0/rant
GPL software, at least until now, hasn't come in contact with a lot of the "money grubbing" that infests the commercial software industry, not to mention things like the movie/music industry (hrm... DVDs anyone?). Get ready for it though: following the "there's money to be made in everything" mantra, more and more companies will hop on the Linux bandwagon, disregarding any petty "philosophy" concerns for concrete and immediate fiscal gain. Corel seemed to want to do it, LinuxOne obviously wants to do it, and many hardware manufacturers seem to want to do it. The recent trend is somewhat disturbing - companies release binary-only modules as "open-source", and even work hard to claim a part of Linux as their intellectual property. Even the name "Linux" has caused a few instances of trademark litigation.
Has there been any work toward the formation of a body of lawyers to defend the principles of free software and Linux? I know the EFF helped out with the CSS suit - any chance of getting this type of defense for the GPL? I can't wait to see the day we take the offensive - when we (the free software community) start suing the "money-grubbing" for GPL violations.
make: Leaving
I agree. But, after reading the LinuxNewbie site I quickly come to believe that LinuxNewbie doesn't understand this. In my eyes, they are so wide of that mark I got to wondering: What are their credentials? Are we sure it's not a FUD site?
Example: Look at their Samba advice: download the source and build it... no wait, it's better than that, su root and with "blind-faith", build the rpm!. No mention of Debian or Slackware or SUSE... no mention of the samba binary that undoubtedly came with your own distro, no mention of rpmfind or pulling down a binary. This isn't newbie advice! This is screwbie advice! Anybody know if that version they encourage is compatible with the kernels found on store shelves?
So, after reading that, I went and looked at the "why I chose NT over Linux" article on their front page. The guy who wrote it started seeming a lot more sophisticated to me than the inexperienced person he makes himself out to be. And the "discussion" they've got going about that article: I might as well be reading BillG's mail folder!
OK, then I saw it in their credo: cross-platform, other OSes... their own original content, none of that "confusing" other doc that's out there... to me it says "linux-screwbie," through and through.
Thanks for that link! I feel compelled to go over and campaign for any other candidate: Regardless of their motivations, I don't think they are helping. MHO, of course, but I did take the time to read their pages...
I have a question for you guys aboue LinuxOne: Ok, I've gathered that it's a bad rip-off distrobution, and I won't argue with that, but is there any other reason it's getting so much hype?
-The Tempest
Since the first time it appeared on Slashdot, nothing even remotely positive has appeared about LinuxOne. Everyone seems to have already decided their shady and evil, and are interpreting everything they do that way. Give them a chance before you judge them. Maybe some new and useful software will come of it. And keep in mind, this is their first distro, ever.
By 'looks good,' I mean that the more linux there is, and the more stress on the GPL there is, the better. For there to be a vibrant, effective community, there needs to be good along with the bad. And with free software, people can very simply throw it away and move on to better things.
And that looks good to me.
--
Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I hope someone is remembering all this stuff so in 10 years time when they're making a "Pirates of Silicon Valley" style open-source expose the stuff about linuxone can be added for comic relief. They're incorporated in Nevada - to minimise the details of their business they have to disclose, they've taken someone else's product and re-packaged it poorly. They claim to have "A wide variety of drivers, enhanced networking capabilities, and user interface capabilities differentiate LinuxOne OS from other variants of the UNIX system." The guy who set them up also set up a company (NetUSA or USANet I think they're called) which listed a couple of years ago and who's share price has fallen in a spectacular fashion, and which now just spams people. Their web site also claimed they were porting "selected applications" from Windows to Linux! A couple of months ago there server was still running Redhat 6.1 (with most of the security features turned off!). No-one from the bay-area linux users group had ever heard of this guy before linuxone showed up. Wow! Something like this could only happen in real life because no-one would make stuff like this up. Perhaps I should start writing the script now for "Open-Source, the movie."
If it had XFree86 3.3.3.1, it's worse than a bad repackage of M6.0--Mandrake 5.3 had 3.3.5, IIRC...
undees@remove-this-part.hotmail.com
Thanks,
a curious unDees
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
Hey there has a big hype about LOL (I borrowed the acronym) and how it will be a big player in the market (mostly by people who dont crap about linux and just saying it beacuse they like the company). Personally i think it will fall flat on its face. Mainly because the finance and/or business world and the computer world have widely conflicting views. A lot of people in finance think that redhat is a great company i dont know anyone who will disagree about the quality of thier product(s). I see the same thing happening in LOL
it might look like a great company (and hey it got some big weights backing it up) but the fact i am dont think i am going to switch to it.
All said and done i think it would be better to wait untill we actually starting using LOL
That was a linux site? Well then why were all the quotes ?'s??? All I could think was, ?They never tested this site in linux.?
Look at LinuxOne from Microsoft's point of view.
They absolutely have to be ROFL at the Linux community.
They probably wish they had thought of it first.
Linux involved in a HUGE flop, and probably a future legal/financial scandal to boot!
Just the thing to propel the FUD-mobile into the new millennium (begins Jan.1,2001).
I really think an investigation into LinuxOne is in order.
And if it can be proven, Linus, along with all the legitimate Linux distributions large and small should publicly denounce LinuxOne as a fraud as soon as possible.
WireHead
WireHead
The previous message was created with 100% recycled words.
Sure it will go up. Then the smart money will go short on it, and another crop of daytraders will be plowed under. Those are the breaks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Someone might want to moderate that up as informative. I didn't know shorts were regulated like that.
OTOH, shorting is just borrowing shares, so if I want to borrow shares from somebody outside the normal channels, how can they regulate that? For those who don't know what shorting is, here's an example:
So, as soon as LinuxOne goes IPO, give me a thousand shares. I promise to give you back 1100 shares 3 months later. Great deal, eh? Well, it's a great deal for me if LinuxOne goes bust, because I sold those 1000 shares and all I have to do is give you 1100 worthless certificates 3 months from now. Sucks to be you. I pocket the share price of LinuxOne at the time I borrowed the shares. OTOH, it's a bad deal for me if LO goes up, because then I have to buy back 1100 shares at the current market price and give them back to you, and you get 1100 shares that are worth even more than they were before. Sucks to be me.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
he linuxnewbie.org's web page has the ? problem. All the single quotes appear as question marks. This happens if the web page was edited using any Micro$oft software, because M$ once again decided to bastardize the standard (unicode in this case).
For anyone interested, there is a solution to this problem. There's a public domain program called demoroniser that parses html and cuts out Microsoft's bogus unicode mangling. It's conveniently written in Perl, so you can modify it if you don't particularly like the way that the original author decided to correct MS's mistakes.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Investors jumping on this bandwagon will get bit, which means they'll be more cautious next time sombody mentions Linuxs, and they might actually re-search, and come to understand the Linux philosaphy. Then people will relize hat NOBODY owns Linux, and then the OSS light bulb will begin to go on above alot more heads.
or not
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Linuxnewbie.org is usually a fairly fast site. I visit the site frequently, because the atmosphere is quite as flamable. But today I've noticed it has been rather slow.
Hey Microsoft!! What's that your running hotmail on?
I take it you thought my post on the AOL-Timewarner EMI merge so much you decided to post something just like it three times on another story, huh?
Okay.
*smack*
The One and Only:
-- J.R.R Trollkien, son of Troll, son of Trall
Have a nice day.
-- J.R.R Trollkien, son of Troll, son of Trall
If it's so bad (that it causes difficulties when installed), people wouldn't (couldn't) use it.
Ok, just how many flavors of Linux do we need? Each company seems to aim their product at a specific customer base. Redhat is big business, Caldera is easy(ier) for the masses, Corel is for desktops, TurboLinux for workstations... Does LinuxOne really feel like they are serving a specific customer base, or just groping for money?
Well I had a hard time getting the page to load so I am posting this not only as a rebuttal to your crappy first post but to allow people to read it on a faster server (slashdot instead of the crappy/slow server that is was originally on).
==============================================
Monday, 24-Jan-2000 15:44:53 EST
Because Great Minds Think Alike
LinuxOne: A First Look (What the HELL is this?!?)
Written By: Avatar
Pimping itself as the easiest to install and use Linux OS, LinuxOne finally put out both LinuxOne OS V1.2 &
LinuxOne Lite V1.0 to the masses. Sounds good right?
Test System A:
Pentium II 400Mhz
Asus P2B-F
128MB PC100
Voodoo3 3000 AGP
PPA Zip Drive
10GB HD
32X CD
4x4x16 CDRW
3Com Vortex NIC (@Home cable modem)
Gateway CrystalScan 17
Test System B:
Pentium 200Mhz
Gigabyte GA586TX3
64MB EDO
Matrox Millenium MGA
4GB HD
32X CD
Optiquest Q71 17
I downloaded LinuxOne Lite, just to give it a trial and see what would happen. This version runs out of your
Windows drive like WinLinux 2000. Since I didn?t have problems with WinLinux, I figured I should not have
problem with this one either. Following the minimal directions, I downloaded and installed on Test System A.
No sweat. Unlike WinLinux, LinuxOne Lite (to be referred to as LOL) did not put up an icon on the start menu for
easy starts. LOL also does not have a configuration editor program for Windows so you can configure you setting
before launching. (Just in case of a goof up.)
And so I fired it up. Windows shut down, restarted in DOS mode, and started to load up LOL. That is when it all
hit the fan. The monitor started blinking continuously making the screen nearly unreadable. I missed the console
login, but caught ½ second glimpses of the X login once it came up. Braving it out I tried to login with the
password given, but more than just the monitor must have been off because I couldn't get it typed. With that, I
gave up on it and rebooted via CTRL-ALT-DEL. It took 6 times to get it to take. Once Windows loaded again, I
deleted the whole thing and moved on to the full version, LinuxOne. (To be referred to as LO.)
The FTP site for LO is fairly decent once you figure it out. It appears like any normal RH/Mandrake ftp area but
everything is labeled LinuxOne. The one nice thing I found was a folder called cdrom. Download this and burn it
to a CD and you're ready to go, complete with boot disk images. The ftp site also offers network boot disk for ftp
installs. (I know, almost everyone else does too.) So, with the CD burned, I was ready to go.
Not willing to give up Mandrake 7 for an unknown distro, (especially given the experience with LOL), I opted to
install on Test System B. I figured it is such a generic system, the install should be just fine. Booting of diskette,
I noticed it looked just like RedHat. And with good reason. The install is exactly like, if not, RedHat's. The only
difference was that the RedHat name never appeared. Even older version of Mandrake let RedHat take some credit
for the installation. Overall, the install was smooth and boring. If one has even installed previous versions of
RedHat or Mandrake, there is nothing to new to see. Also, it only allows for making one user account: root.
Upon reboot, the system fired up no problem, and at login I was greeted with the familiar Mandrake ANSI graphic
of Tux. (Or at least a penguin if not the Lead Penguin himself.) Well, that explains why the install was so familiar.
The whole thing is probably a revamp of Mandrake, right? Nope.
I launched KDE to take a look for changes. None. Not a single change to be found. Not an icon, not a name,
nothing. I kept looking for any reference to LO in the system, but only found 3 xpm files. "Not self advertisement
on this one," I thought. Then I clicked on Netscape to see if the usual help file was there. And I got an error. The
default help file was missing. I was a bit shocked at this. If a newbie installed and needed help, they were out of
luck. So I started digging through the system to find the docs and found what I had suspected-Mandrake docs. Not
only Mandrake docs, but Mandrake 6.0 no less. These guys not only couldn't get their own docs together, but also
could not point Netscape in the right direction.
Further checks confirmed the LO is, for the most part, a badly repackaged Mandrake 6.0 distribution. Xfree86 is at
version 3.3.3.1, KDE 1.1.1, and kernel 2.2.12-2 are installed. In my opinion, LO is a "Why Bother" distribution.
The website mentions ?sophisticated proprietary device drivers, but I couldn't find them on the CD. That doesn't
mean they are not there, just that I can't find them, or any reference to them. Overall, I would say skip this
distribution unless it is easier for you to get than a real version of Mandrake or RedHat.
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Why would linus care? He hasn't gone after Caldera, or RedHat, or SuSe, which all distribute binary-only components.
--
see shy jo
Mandrake has never pretended that it wasn't Red Hat-based. Credit was given where credit was due. Further, Mandrake wasn't just a rebranding, but it attempted to add touches that made it easier to use--like KDE.
Yes, I also found that quite amusing.
For those not up on their TLA's (Three Letter Abbreviations), LOL == Laugh Out Loud
The linuxnewbie.org's web page has the ? problem. All the single quotes appear as question marks. This happens if the web page was edited using any Micro$oft software, because M$ once again decided to bastardize the standard (unicode in this case).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but linuxnewbie.org is supposed to be a Linux web site. If so, one would hope they'd actually use Linux!
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
At that event, Sun also is expected to announce it will open up access to Solaris 8 source code.
That means, they're finally unveiling Solaris 8 and offering it for free. It is SPECULATED that they may make it open source. There's nothing definitive in the article saying they WILL release it.
But if they do, that would be fantastic.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
LinuxOne's true product appears to be their shares. They are perfectly targeted at investors who don't know better.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It would be a VERY BAD THING if this Linux IPO suddenly goes the same way as RedHat or VALinux... I really doubt it, I think most investors at least have some common sense.
On another matter, I think RedHat will end the year with less than half of it's actual stock value. The reason? Anyone can do what they have done. In sharp contrast, VALinux has the hardware business going for it. I think that, in the long run, VALinux is likely to start making more money, faster, than RedHat is ever going to be able.
I guess a line needs to be added to the GPL, then. If you want to use it, or sell products based on it, you need to contribute to it. I've read it and reread it, and it says nothing about this requirement. :)
Seriously now, LinuxOne is just the first of many companies that will do this. Thanks to the GPL, every friend and foe of the Linux community can do whatever they like with Linux, so long as they make available any modifications they make to the source code in their shipping product.
Why should they feel the need to add anything? Linux as a whole is making huge leaps in almost every area without their help... So in most cases a new developer would find that the work that they were doing was already being done by someone more established than themselves, and therefore their work would have no chance of getting included. And having a staff programmers require money outlays. Why would anyone want to hire on a staff of programmers when they can enlist a commnity of developers for free? It can only help the balance sheet...
So far as your qualifications for what each company does... Surely you can thnk of something better than "Caldera ties Microsoft in up in Court?" For one, Caldera settled for a mere pittance of what they were originally seeking, and for two, simultaneous, since they've now settled does that now mean they're not a real Linux company anymore?
If the lot of programmers working on Linux at night for free are upset about this, then perhaps they should investigate a different license? They didn't gripe with Redhat, Cobalt and VA Linux... And I'm sure there were people that made contributions and got left out of the crowd.
What LinuxOne are more vulnerable to is the possibility that people might figure out that...the STOCK isn't a very good buy.
Why would this be a problem? If I make $20 million in an IPO, why should I care if people later decide that buying my stock was a bad idea? They got screwed, I got rich. Where's the vulnerability?
Then Linux would also have to sue Redhat, Storm, SuSE, Slack, Mandrake, Corel, Caldera, etc., etc. They all include closed source applications.
Linus owns the Linux kernel (and a few fiddlibits). He does not own any other parts of a distribution. He has no say so at all about what programs may or may not use kernel services. In fact, he has a special exception to the kernel license that says essentially the same thing.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
All LinuxOne has done is take someone else's product, rip their name out of it and slap their own sticker on it. Why use a cheap knock-off when you can own the original, made by a company that is committed to serving the community?
Well, if they're smart, they'll sell it cheaper than Red Hat / Mandrake. They could make a killing just selling the same stuff cheaper and letting RH / Mandrake do the development....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Great... I'll post my CV here sometime as well, but more to the point..
Hence, it is totally possible they'll get sucked into the latest tulip mania (or PenguinMania TM) and buy shares in LinuxOne. And get taken to the cleaners.
Great... that's the way things are supposed to work. Why is everyone getting excited about this?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I also read somewhere (so this is hearsay) that the order was for $500k worth of software. Kinda like BillG making a $1million dollar donation to a Uni, when $500k of it is 500 $1 cds stamped with an image of W2K/BackOr^hffice. Oh, what a tangled web we weave..
+&x
However, i'm afraid they will opt out of this problem through a cheap method, as all other things relating to this company. They will provide a 56k website where you can download the source, hence, almost unattainable.
While I know that other companies are doing such things as closed, binary-only distributions, I believe that we need some way to stop these morons from tarnishing the good name of Linux. And this might have been an option.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Dude, you're the market. I'm the market. Everybody's the market. If you think LinuxOne is evil and Suse (or debian or redhat or mandrake or OpenBSD etc etc) is better, be the market. Buy yourself a copy of your favorite distro's latest release. Buy it full price. Buy it from the part of the market you want to support (be that VA, or the distro org. themselves, or from Ma and Pa computers down the street...) You have market power, use it. It's not just about supporting the community, it's about market economies and who is going to be there in 20 years. And with something like Debian, yeah, they'll prolly be there for 20 years if the global economy collapsed tomorrow. But support your favorite linux companies, because they wont stick around unless the market asks them to...
itachi the econ geek
FREE to all: Story here
Yet another rejected story...
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
... Market Forces will choose the better distros over the worse ones.
The market, in the long run, given perfect access at no cost in real time to all information, will choose the most profitable distro over other, not as profitable, distros.
Basically, must market mavens have imperfect info, have no idea what Linux is, and don't even know the ls command, let alone their mother's maiden name. I wouldn't count on them to choose wisely.
Will in Seattle
Come back and post after you've read an introductory economics text.
I was just cleaning out my closet this morning for one of those chairties, and kept three of my economics text books. Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Canadian Business Economics. I've got a 2 year Business Admin certificate from Capilano College, in addition to three other certifications, military training (TQ4), the usual college 4 year, Oracle Developers Certification, and a Data Resource Mgmt post-grad certificate from the University of Washington.
The market doesn't care about profitability per se. It it merely a method of balancing buyers and sellers. However, investors (those who buy and sell shares) invest their money for a return, expecting a premium for placing money in stocks, a less liquid form than bonds or cash or certificates of deposit.
Hence, given an amount of stock in Red Hat equal to an amount of stock in LinuxOne, and where Red Hat provides service to technogeeks and LinuxOne charges tons of dollars for service, thus meaning that, even though Red Hat has 1 million copies of their distro shipped each year (or downloaded) and makes 10 cents off each, while LinuxOne ships 100,000 Chinese language copies of Mandrake repackaged and then charges more for support calls but the tech support is asian-friendly, it is totally possible that LinuxOne could be more profitable.
Personally, I doubt it. It's probably a grand rip off. And if Red Hat is more profitable and regarded as less risky than LinuxOne, then the stock market over the long run should value Red Hat stock more highly than LinuxOne.
But right now, 95 percent or more of investors in Linux stocks haven't the faintest idea what they're worth and probably don't know much about Linux either. Hence, it is totally possible they'll get sucked into the latest tulip mania (or PenguinMania TM) and buy shares in LinuxOne. And get taken to the cleaners.
Here endeth the lesson.
Will in Seattle
The author sent that to me in I guess some Word format. I tried editing out the ? marks, but I guessed I missed a few--I use pico. thanks for pointing that out tho.
http://www.icalledit.com - Predicting the future, one post at a time
I see their next product as a software package, like Mandrake's PowerPack. Except it would be: "Really Obsolete Trash For Linux"
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I have seen zero positive press on LinuxOne aside from their own press releases. The Linux community should respond strongly, quickly and accurately to positive LinuxOne press. This will prevent LinuxOne from growing into a significant problem.
We used to say Linux is good now we must qualify the statement to Good Linux is good.
Reviews like this are amusing for people who know a lot about Linux to read, but we should be getting this sort of information out to the people who don't know a lot about Linux.
You wouldn't consider visitors to LinuxNewbie.com to fit the above description? Aside from some of the bigger general computing sites (ZDNet, Cnet, etc.) I couldn't think of a more fitting site to warn would-be-installers of the potential pitfalls awaiting them if they try to install LOL.
What people really don't like (myself included) is that people can make insane ammounts of money from something that is inferior.
:)
:)
So you must really hate it every time you load a tape in your VHS recorder, hey? This is one of the classic "inferior product + superior marketing = winner" situations. Sucks but it's true. Shit, just look at DOS/Windows....
However seriously if you did half-assed work at your professional job how long would you be employed? Unless you know hypnotism not a very long time.
Hah! How many large, moronic beauracracies have you worked in? Dilbert and the Peter Principle are still alive & kicking. Not even "downsizing" gets rid of the dead wood - they manage to cling on.
One can only hope that the next 5 to 10 years will help purge the bloated, non-performing corporates where incompetants can hide. Of course, knowing the way the universe works, they'll rise up to become CEO's or consultants who dream up new ways to screw up a company
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
In economics, there is a concept called price discrimination. Usually, it is discussed in terms of a monopoly which can charge different customers different prices, based on location or some other sorting criteria. But there is another situation where it can occur easily enough. Where the product can be diversified, giving different customers different packaging, there can be price discrimination.
This is precisely why in the end, there will be more than one Linux distribution. There is room for several with different goals. There is no reason why one can't specialize in merely bundling the latest stable versions of everything, while another goes for rock solid security, and a third concentrates on an easy install and good support for new users.
And that's what's great about open source. The barriers to entry are low. But as LinuxOne is demonstrating, they aren't zero. If you want to introduce a new distribution, you have to at least make an attempt. The Linux community will shread you if you don't. Now, will Joe Newbie read the reviews on Slashdot? No. Will J. Random Reporter for some magazine that Joe reads read us? Probably. Will Big Retail Software, Inc. read us or a source that does read us before they stock their shelves? Almost certainly. If you don't do a credible job of putting together a real distribution, you aren't going to be taken seriously.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
They already release 'free' or near-free versions of the Solaris 7 source. I wouldn't count it as news that they plan on continuing the tradition.
But I do agree the 'free-license'ing of Solaris 8 is significant! Have you seen some of their current fees??
.sig: Now legally binding!
Reviews like this are amusing for people who know a lot about Linux to read, but we should be getting this sort of information out to the people who don't know a lot about Linux.
I know some people who have been completely turned off of Linux because they had so many problems with an inferior distribution that wouldn't install properly.
It's one of these cases where one guy ruins it for all the rest, and the only way to solve this problem is by helping non-techie people understand Linux better.
"On the other hand, the early worm gets eaten."
Hmm..could it be they are just in it for the money? As Linux continues to grow in both the corporate and consumer sections as it has over the past year, I expect to see more and more companies trying to cash in by simply repackaging an existing product.
I agree that the market will decide. I get tired of all the anti-capitalist /. readers that bitch about how some corporation is tainting some intellectually pure technology. None of us would have the luxury of even reading this - if we did
not live in a market driven world.
What people really don't like (myself included) is that people can make insane ammounts of money from something that is inferior. If it was good I would say that they deserve all the money (maybe). However seriously if you did half-assed work at your professional job how long would you be employed? Unless you know hypnotism not a very long time.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
"Oh no! They used Redhat's distro, and removed reference to Redhat in the installer". The GPL allows that, no?
As long as you give out the full source code then all is forgiven. On a minor note could someone create say an obfusicated version of the source code for release and then release the code so that it would take just a little longer to get ahold of?
"They changed nothing in KDE." That's bad? I never change KDE either... It'd suck if every distro decided that KDE should have a different color scheme, and/or resize the icons a couple pixels larger or smaller.
One of the things I like best about something new is it's look. I can pretend that I am using win95 to a degree with modern window managers. Part of setting yourself above the rest is to give a good reason that anyone should use you and that means? Making things different in some way.
With all the bantering recently about how awful they are, of course no one's going to give them a fair shake. I hate to say it, but so far as the LinuxOne saga goes, I'd just as rather wait for a ZDNet review of their distro than read one
from a "Linux" website.
Well for what it's worth I think that at least some analysis on the situation by an "average" person instead of an editor of a column of some internet publication is a nice thing. Would you have even the slightest curiousity about that neighbor of yours if someone came up to you and said that perhaps he was a wanted felon? Don't tell me you wouldn't even bother to take a close look at him?
The Linux sites have already declared Redhat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and Mandrake the winners and LinuxOne to be the loser.
Simple first impressions are the most important for anyone and everything. If I have a new car from a Ford dealership break down on my first week of use I would not be in the mood to buy any more Fords in the future. All of the other distributions (even the Newest Mandrake) are more tested than one that isn't. We can safely assume that linuxone is in fact that terribly good or at least not terribly well tested from this even slightly opinionated information.
I really do hope that they do well on their IPO and use that money to become a "real" Linux company that everyone will love to hate.
In the meantime everyone will hate them more and more. This will cause the company to eventually go broke or the founder to magically escape^H^H^H^H^H^H vacation in the Cayman Islands for 7 years or so.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
what do you know about repackageing an existing product? the bottled water people have been doing it for years! just run tap water across sand into cool shaped plastic bottles! call it "good for you" and sell the heck out of it!
Why does there have to be extensive research on this topic? Is the use of repackaging to be encouraged in the least? I really would say that it is not. There is some scientific basis for what people actually say. For instince the FDA has a few little rules that basically say that you have to have truthful packaging and such. Now I assume that if you were to test the product (in this case the bottled water) against "standard" tap water for many people the bottled water just might be slightly cleaner because of their process. Now does that mean that it will improve your life in any significant way? No.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
We at LinuxOne, Inc. are committed to making your installation and use of Linux as easy, reliable, and advantageous as possible. We will provide:
the easiest Linux operating system [LinuxOne Lite -- order the easiest Linux OS to install which runs under Windows] and software to install for both workstations and servers;
the best collection of device drivers anywhere: table, fully functional, and fully supported; the most useful and complete set of application software;
and a commitment to full-spectrum support and services, including education, consulting, and seminars.
How will we accomplish all this? Through in-depth Linux experience leveraged with hard work; through extensive worldwide contacts and alliances; and, most importantly, through our dedication to your service and satisfaction. [/END SARCASM]
;)
Of course we all know LinuxOne is a fully owned subsidiary of Microsoft, Inc. doing this to spread FUD. Couldn't be that anyone is out to just scam the public, or that anyone is plain incompetent.
"Oh no! They used Redhat's distro, and removed reference to Redhat in the installer". The GPL allows that, no?
;)
Not really. We aren't talking about code changes here (code changes are perfectly ok), we're talking about COPYRIGHT changes.
s/(c) 1998 Red Hat/(c) 2000 LinuxOne/g is definitely NOT a change that is ok.
What the Mandrake people were doing in their 6.0 and 6.1 versions (Leave the Red Hat copyright in, adn add their own, along with some changes to the installer) is ok.
I just wonder if we really want them to acknowledge our copyright - after all "Oh, LinuxOne is (c) Red Hat. LinuxOne sucks, so Red Hat sucks."
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
They know their product sucks - they aren't using it on their server. /etc/issue.net of Red Hat Linux 6.0 when you tried to telnet in. :)
The server is running Apache 1.3.11 (they're shipping 1.3.6), and a couple of days ago (before they blocked the telnet port), you got the
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
And yes, I'm willing to lose karma for this guy's right to express his opinion.
Visit
I agree. But, after reading the LinuxNewbie site I quickly come to believe that LinuxNewbie doesn't understand this. In my eyes, they are so wide of that mark I got to wondering: What are their credentials? Are we sure it's not a FUD site?
Example: Look at their Samba advice: download the source and build it... no wait, it's better than that, su root and with "blind-faith", build the rpm!. No mention of Debian or Slackware or SUSE... no mention of the samba binary that undoubtedly came with your own distro, no mention of rpmfind or pulling down a binary. This isn't newbie advice! This is screwbie advice! Anybody know if that version they encourage is compatible with the kernels found on store shelves?
So, after reading that, I went and looked at the "why I chose NT over Linux" article on their front page. The guy who wrote it started seeming a lot more sophisticated to me than the inexperienced person he makes himself out to be. And the "discussion" they've got going about that article: I might as well be reading BillG's mail folder!
OK, then I saw it in their credo: cross-platform, other OSes... their own original content, none of that "confusing" other doc that's out there... to me it says "linux-screwbie," through and through.
Maaan I read slashdot way too much.
Here goes this has already been talked about in previous LinuxOne stories. The website that claims to have bought $500,000 of software looks like a gaudy high school kid's site and is run by a webmaster with a hotmail account. A slashdot reader has called the number on the website before and woken the website's owner out of bed (it's his home #).
That doesn't sound like someone who has $500,000 to pay for software, now does it?
Motley Fool ran a story debunking them a while ago that was posted on slashdot...the references to waking up the owner of the powersource site appeared in a slashdot post before they appeared on motley fool.
I couldn't think of a better acronym for this distribution, nor a more appropriate one! :)
:(
Lets just hope LinuxOne doesn't laugh all the way to the bank
-BK
Even better, first they offer an IPO to raise $35 Million.
kwsNI
These folks are clearly in it for the money. Read their website, it's like a brochure for an IPO. It's full of "we will"'s and "leverage" and all kinds of silly superlatives that they provide no evidence to support.
I think the worst has to be the little "LinuxOne Receives Another Initial Software Order" blurb on the sidebar. What's this supposed to be, a subliminal message?
Just reading their site makes me feel like I've been coated in a fine mist of smarm. Yes, these folks have a right to redistribute whatever they want and make claims about it etc. etc. just like anyone else can with GPL'd software.
But it still stinks of greed and a fast-buck mentality.
If you look at the boxes on the store shelves with names like Corel Linux Deluxe or Red Hat 6.1 Deluxe you will find some "closed source"/"binary only" components.
RMS's head might be pressured by all of this; that's not the point.
The thing that they are vulnerable to is of someone demanding to receive copies of the source code to things that are licensed under the GPL, as is their right under the provisions of the GPL.
What LinuxOne are more vulnerable to is the possibility that people might figure out that:
Hopefully most of the "figuring out" of this will take place before they buy anything.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Mind you, if that takes LinuxOne out, in the process, it might not be such a bad thing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Oh no! They used Redhat's distro, and removed reference to Redhat in the installer". The GPL allows that, no?
"They changed nothing in KDE." That's bad? I never change KDE either... It'd suck if every distro decided that KDE should have a different color scheme, and/or resize the icons a couple pixels larger or smaller.
With all the bantering recently about how awful they are, of course no one's going to give them a fair shake. I hate to say it, but so far as the LinuxOne saga goes, I'd just as rather wait for a ZDNet review of their distro than read one from a "Linux" website.
The Linux sites have already declared Redhat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and Mandrake the winners and LinuxOne to be the loser.
I really do hope that they do well on their IPO and use that money to become a "real" Linux company that everyone will love to hate.
Take Company A (lets say RedHat). They make a great product, they put it out there, people can get what they need done, they don't need to call support. Any support they do need, they get in the free first 180 days of support.
Now take Company B (lets say LinuxOne). They have a buggy LinuxOne Lite, which people need a lot of support for. They have a repackage of a repackage of a distribution. They are missing help files. There's an excellent chance that people won't be able to get to their support forums. They will most likely need support.
Now, Company A's software is more likely to be used in the first place, but there's a good chance that someone could be using Company B's software, throw it away, and just go with Microsoft. Either way gives a bad name for Linux, but Company B is more likely to make money as they have users that 'require' support. And if any of the hype of the LinuxOne Marketing Machine ('You too can have a successful company through marketing!') realize that there might be people out there that are almost forced to use this distribution.
Anyway, with free software, all bets are off in the idea of 'what makes a successful company.' Sometimes, technological markets have a stranger basis than technical merits. I mean, look at DirectPlay from Microsoft. It is *not* better than id's networking code, but it sure is used a lot more...
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I mean, he does own the name Linux so....
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
With its open source code...
All good and well right? Well, far down below on the same page:
LinuxOne OS will support these new technologies with its sophisticated proprietary device drivers
Now, aside from the fact that they're using proprietary device drivers, which in and of itself would take away my vote for them, they are also hypocritical. It seems to me that the only purpose of this company is to make money while bringing nothing new to Linux users.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Sun is NOT releasing the Solaris 8 source. They are distributing Solaris 8 fee-free. They should have been doing this for years, but apparently the S/W division liked it's 'revenue earning' status in the corporate hierarchy.
.sig: Now legally binding!
are not likely to download a huge CDrom image and burn a Linux CD, they're more likely to go to CompUSA and buy Corel Linux or Red Hat or Mandrake or SuSE or Caldera OpenLinux...
and while some of those distros may be more appropriate to newbies than others, ANY of them will be thousands of times better than LO appears to be...
+----------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
Receives Initial Software Order For $500,000.00
It strikes me as very bad for linux. If companies are going to be spending a half a million dollars on linux, and end up getting a product like "LinuxOne OS" which, according to this review doesn't work at all, they will be very unhappy with "linux" not with linux one. And it could harm linux in extreme ways.
LinuxOne, and the others which are sure to follow, will do what noone has been able to do before, give linux a bad reputation as a buggy, useless, inferior software.
I for one am very worried.
So I'm of the opinion that there is no 'one true distro.' Each distro is targeted at a specific group. Debian is for the true blue gnu freaks, turbolinux offers excellent support of pacific rim languages, corel is for newbies etc...
So what market is linuxone targeting? I've wrestled with this question and come to a conclusion, it's for people who want the pentium optimized binaries of mandrake, but find the term 'mandrake' to be offensive. If this describes you, then you should check out this distro. If you do not find the term 'mandrake' offensive then you should probably take a sensitivity training course you sexist/speciesist/whatever bastard!
Yeah, it's not a serious post, but it's not like linuxone's a serious company/distro.
--Shoeboy
Q: Can I access the Internet?
:)
A: Certainly. To access the Internet, return to
Windows because the Lite version is built on
top of Windows. Another option is to use
LinuxOne OS.
Ummm...no, thanks. I'll stick to a regular distro for now
"We want to call Shenanigan on these people"
"Now, you know you can't just go around calling Shenanigans on people without good reason."
"But they sold me this Linux distribution and it won't even boot!"
"Well, we'll just have to see about that. Let's try it on my police laptop..." (Vendor deftly switches LinuxOne CD for Redhat 6.1) "Well, now, there you see, boys, it boots just fine!"
"But..But...it didn't work! They're crooks!"
...the list of problems is amusing...
I, for one, am not all that amused. How many new potential Linux users will install this (or try to) and fail miserably, then conclude that Linux is crap. How many of them will tell their friends about their misfortune? Will Big Bad Bill point to this and say "See, we told ya! It's hard to install and buggy. Come back to us and we'll hold your hand and make it all better."
We know that LinuxOne != Linux, but newbies may try to equate the two. This could end up alienating many converts to the light side. We are now between a rock and a hard place: we want LinuxOne to bite turf, but we don't want Linux itself to crash and burn with it.
In our advocacy of Linux, let's be sure to point people to some of the many fine distros that are available and steer folks away from LinuxOne.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.