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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.
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.
They're not a FUD site, or at least this writer isn't attempting to FUD.
Avatar is Cobey Schmidt, a guy I used to know in the Army. He's an employee at VisionTek (a hardware company up in Gurnee, IL). He did the review on his own machines, on his own time and submitted it to Linuxnewbie just to help.
As to others on the site? I dunno.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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
"LinuxOne, the Linux distribution for the dumber than average user. It's not any easier to learn than other distros, but more likely to fleece you".
--The basis of all love is respect
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
In a word, yes.
The FSF is very willing to test the GPL, but has not found a test case yet. But they do have money set aside to retain lawyers yet.
Frankly, I think that all this noise about how the GPL hasn't been tested in court is BS. People don't say that about the MS EULA, but I've never heard of it being tested in court either!
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.
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.
...
I for one would not do any such thing and I would not be considered an expert in the stock market. Maybe if perhaps other people have already invested in the stock then people see a pattern they might just go along with the rest of the people. In fact if you want to make a quick and dirty buck try this some time. Just buy into any startup company wait for a short while or until you thing that the price of stock has increased enough and then sell. Bingo instant increase and said little crappy company may enjoy it's downfall.
Never underestimate the intelligence of the average day trader, nor that of your average stock broker.
Well I guess that means that me without any formal business training can do any of those tasks because they do not require talent right? I live in a world where if people do something wrong then they suffer for it. Usually in the form of unemployment of some sort.
Hey, it says Linux, right? So it must be good
With all the FUD that MS puts out you would think that the average person would not think this way. Oh well...
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
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.