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TurboLinux & Linksys Announce Bundling Deal
Sam writes, "TurboLinux, Inc. announced today an agreement with Linksys to bundle TurboLinux in shipments of Linksys 10/100 Ethernet products sold in North America. The special bundling will be included in popular small and medium business solutions such as 10/100 hubs and switches, routers, NIC and PC cards.
The agreement, projected by the companies to include more than 1.2 million product shipments over the next 12 months, will give Linksys customers TurboLinux operating system solutions with selected purchases of Linksys products. Source: Electic Tech "
Just think, now you've got some nice CDs to give to your friends - or you can give them a nice NIC and get them to try out Linux at the same time.
Bonus!
Plus, I can use more for my costume for Burning Man...
Will in Seattle
I knew that. I just... er... um. Wanted to skip some lines. Or something.
"*sarcasm* Atl..."
"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR TAKE IS!!!"
I got a free Turbo 4.0 with vol2 of Linux Mag I think. Looked like RH with a few extra tweaks and apps.
I know they have been arround awhile but they seem to be marketing their products like the Old Gaurd.
Check out their download page. Care to register first? If that doesn't discourage you how about skipping strait to the "download/install" page where you have two options:
There are two primary ways to download and install TurboLinux:
1). FTP Install
2). Local Hard Drive Install
Not exactly encouraging to the 99.9% of potential users who have at best a 56K connection and maybe little experience installing Linux. And if you try to go to ftp.turbolinux.com to download the entire distro you get a dead link.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
yeah, and you know the average home networking user is really ready to take those training wheels off. It'd be a shame if the *nix community had to furthered by something that's given it more attention than is warranted to begin with.
I am all for having Linux CD's distributed in any way possible. My first experience with Linux was from a CD that was laying around in a A+ certification classroom, Redhat 4.0 I think. I picked it up, started browsing and got hooked.
Next I bought the Complete Idiot's book by Ricart which came with Calera 1.3. A few month's later I was running a samba server in a MCSE class. If it wasn't for that RedHat CD laying in a pile of other CD's on a desk in a computer lab I'd probably be just another M$ clone. Yeah, I bought Linksys because it said Linux compatible, and I'm running two triple boot boxes at home with it.
If it had just said it was the NE2000 driver on the box the install would have been a breeze. I have 98 & NT installed because I get paid to support them. I use Linux exclusively for my own work/play except for my cheapo digital camera. Any one know of a driver for Largan Mini 350?
Isaac Newton: "If I have seen farther than other men it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
Bill Gates: "If I have made more money than other men it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants while my legal team imprisoned and castrated them."
Yup it worked off the bat for me too. It was running 98 on an ABIT BP6 motherboard or whatever. It was wacky that a $15 card came with a three foot whip.
Intel runs a corporate preview program that lets you get two of these adapters for $39. They go for $60 each on buy.com. Does all the PXE and wake on lan stuff. The program says you can only order once, but they don't check - ordered three times so far. Check out DesktopEngineer.com Item
The point being, of course, that AOL's strategy did work. Carpet-bombing the market isn't such a bad idea...
Not that it matters, but my network cards of choice all have a Realtek (RTL8xx9) chip under the hood. Not usually stellar performance, but really solid Linux drivers (especially for the NE2000 clone RTL8029), and really solid hardware (I haven't had a bad card yet).
As far as Linksys goes, they aren't too bad, but I've seen better. But then again the only card I've used in Linux of theirs was a 10 Mbps PCMCIA combo card. I didn't use it much, though, because the only way to select Coax/TP was to boot to DOS first (at the time). It isn't auto switching by default. Bummer...
Besides that, I get tired of those TurboLinux people calling me all the time at work. I've probably talked to 5 sales reps all who want me to convert our nicely run RedHat isp over to theirs because it comes with "server optimized kernels" and "a better web environment package". The funniest thing was that me, a 17 year old, was able to stump 3 of these reps in less than one sentance. (not that I was trying, but...)
Netgear's PCMCIA card also doesn't work out of the box, but at least I managed to talk to a support person who sounded like he had some idea what's going on.
Today, I'm going back to CompUSA to return Linksys card and give a shot to a really expensive one, made by a company with a '3' in it's name.
you know, it really shows how pathetic your weak attempts at humor are when you have to mark them with *sarcasm* and [humor] tags. try to grow a real sense of humor, then try to post something we'll actually laugh at, dickweed.
However mine had no instructions on the box or on an internal manual - I was doing an install on a headless system - no xwindows and all the docs were PDFs (grrrr) .... took me forever to figure out which linux driver to build into the kernel (hint - ignore the SMC drivers and use the RT8139 instead - this is for an SMC 'ezcard' model 1211TX
message to signal 11: thank you for the wonderful blowjob. here is your karma. just let me know any time you want some positive moderation! my dick can always use some of your lip action.
>How is this going to affect the price of their products?
>A standard NE2000 NIC card runs about $15. TurboLinux 6.0 runs $19.99
It won't affect things in any fashion whatsoever. You can get TurboLinux 6.0 for $1.99 plus shipping just like you can Redhat and the other dists from CheapBytes. The March 2000 issue of Linux Journal for instance is bundled with TurboLinux 6.0 I got from Books A Million for $5.00
On the contrary, I've had to replace my 3com card with linksys. The 3com was nothing but trouble right from the beginning. I dumped it in favor of linksys and have been running smoothly ever since. I guess personal experience will vary.
Installing an operating system is a relatively imposing investment of time and effort for most people, especially if they have to repartition the HD. If they could just pop in a CD and boot that, it'd be way cool. There'd be a very low barrier to trying it out. And hey, what the hell, they could just run it off the CD forever, if Linux ever learns to cope properly with FAT32 (or has it already? I've got red hat 5.2 or something) they could safe files to the HD and never bother with a Linux partition at all.
Or whatever.
It's cool anyhow, somebody should do it.
Not yet, anyway...
A kernel patch and a PCMCIA update later, it did, in fact get automatically detected and configured, but still.
Regardless, now that that particular card is showing signs of dead-ness, methinks I'll be purchacing from Linksys again, because I can't afford a WaveLAN. :(
--
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
I seem to remember it being a LinkSys. But maybe you're right.
I hope the answer is: nothing. It would be great to have 20 million new Linux users. Even if they are all end users, they'll want support contracts, they'll want drivers, they'll tell UCITA vendors to take a hike ...
Sorry about the flame. Fair enough, i was not aware (maybe i was being a zombie, or maybe the article wasn't clear) that the bundling is not universal (i.e. only to north africa). Somehow i guess i just don't feel it's worth getting _that_ worked up about myself, but i respect your ideals, and your right to do so.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
I've had a linksys hub that work fine, and I have etherfast 10/100 that worked fine for a while then all of the sudden it keeps dying on large traffic. I replaced it w/ a 3com905b and it work like charm. I first thought it was samba that was killing it since I use it as samba server, but It was the tulip driver. I tried several tulip driver versions and tweak some settings w/o any luck. I've had similar problem in the past (slow 20-30kb/s bandwith - interface up and down, lots of errors) but managed to fix it somehow. My uptime was a lil over 2 months before the Linksys NIC was starting to die. Linksys: Cheap, It works, supports Linux - but you won't get any help from linksys (tech support doesnot exist). Considering the stress that I've been through just to figure out what the hell was wrong with my linux box+nic and no support from linksys, I probably will not buy any of linksys product no more. I've used netgear products and they have some low end stuff too that works. For nics, Intels and 3coms are still better. telor@hotmail.com phear
As for them teaming up with linux that's great maybe they could make they're own specific drivers even though the NE2000 driver works just fine for both the D-Link and the Linksys.
Since Turbo comes packaged with Samba this should be a win win situation. Home network with a good network and a great operating system
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
...announcement is a little late....
or this is just more old news, dripping like an open sore(ce) from the editors of slushdot.
I was looking around in CompUSA a few weeks ago and saw a LinkSys NIC box that mentioned that TurboLinux was bundled... I didn't get it so I can't say whether it was correct or not, so either they messed up and put the sticker on boxes too early or the announcement is a little late.
Just one small question... how many people out there (I mean mass market... newbies) would take those TurboLinux disks that came with their new network cards, repartition and reformat their hard disk just so they can install Linux?
Yeah, I thought so....
On the other hand, this form of mass-distribution (ala AOL floppy disks) should have some impact on TurboLinuxs market share, if not on Linux as a whole.
*sarcasm* Atleast you get a stylish new coaster instead of the default AOL ones. */sarcasm*
My first reaction was that this is great news.
But I find myself wondering how many folks just toss free CDs that are included with products because of the AOL CD-with-everything phenomenon. Some kind of promotional CD comes with almost everything nowadays.
What will differentiate this CD from the junk CDs (like AOL) that permeate the industry?
Doug ---- Co-host of Ghostly Talk
I'm glad to see this. I use Linksys products exclusively, and recommend them strongly to my customers. However, I'm wondering if this might mean better driver support for the LNE100TX (10/100 PCI Autosensor card). There have been several revisions of the Tulip driver, and each one seems to have its own compatibility hangups. The difference in Version 1 and Version 2 of the 10/100 card required a rewrite on the driver, which really sucked. Mayber somebody will get it through their head that Linksys needs some standardization in their Linux support. But all in all, I really like Linksys products. They need to actually put a driver and some better support on their site, but at least they mention Linux in their support site, which is more than I can say for many companies. Maybe this will also pave the way for other Linux distros to partner up with Linksys, and maybe work on some real support for their products.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Everyone rips on the AOL CDs 'cause the content sucks ass.
Think of the target, it'll be sys admins who get these cd's, and maybe they'll try it out on an extra pc they have laying around, then love it, and move their whole company over to it, then go enjoy a pudding pop.
Think of all the money the Jello (tm) company can make from this!
Hello, welcome to ICQ!
Now, if Netgear would do the same that would be nice. I love netgear FA103X? (PCI 10/100 Tulip) cards. Blaze under Linux/BSD. Im a die hard Netgear/Nortel fan. These little bundles here and there really add up. I do a little computer building for friends and such, and I always include a mandrake or redhat or something that I burn.
Anybody have any good comments on the Netgear 10/100 PCI card?
http://www.freebsd.org
A standard NE2000 NIC card runs about $15. TurboLinux 6.0 runs $19.99. I don't mind buying NIC cards because they're cheap. If the price stays the same then consumers would be happy, but A) Linksys has no incentive to bundle, and B) TurboLinux makes no money from the bundle. If the price goes up, consumers will buy other cards (Like D-Link, which I have had good luck with) because they're still hovering around the $12-$15 price range.
But if the price goes up, what's the difference between buying a Linksys Card with TurboLinux bundled, or buy a different card and TurboLinux seperately....other than conveniance?
-- 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.
From an "advocacy" stance, I'm not really sure I see the point here: I can't see scores of LAN admins getting all excited about this. If they wanted to try Linux, they probably would have already. If they didn't, that copy of TurboLinux is about as useful as yet another AOL coaster^M^M^M^M^M^M^M CD.
From a "cool stuff" stance... well, okay, maybe.
By coincidence I helped a friend setup a proxy on his Windows box this weekend and he bought two of the SMC $15 cards you mentioned. True to form, plug-and-play detection did not properly detect the chipset and there were no printed instructions in the box or anywhere on the box about what to do next. I imagine Joe User would be stuck here. I suspected the "SMC TurboLinux" CD that fell out of the box may have some win drivers on it and sure enough if you dig under a few subdirectories you'll find the Windows oemsetup.inf file, the windows drivers, and if you look at the card itself you see the chipset is SMC1211A and the DOS diagnostic util for that chipset is under that subdirectory on that CD as well, which is also not printed anywhere on the box. See all you had to do was use your DirectTelepathy feature in Windows to have this information sent to you via ESP and then you'd know how to install the drivers for these dapaters. So after seven reboots, waving a dead chicken, threatening the machine with physical harm, and tearfully apologizing to Redmond for working at pro-Linux company I was then able to install and configure the card in Windows and it only took little over an hour. Gee, I really hope Linux can someday be as easy to use as Windows *cough* bullshit *cough*
This person is the first to point out that abysmally low response rate isn't a problem if you have a large enough number of contacts. In the direct mail (junk mail) industry, a 1% response rate is completely reasonable. Distributing a million CDs might yield 10,000 customers, a pretty big jump, especially if 1,000 of those end up buying support services from you.
Plus, people who are already linux users might choose Turbo from among the masses just because they happen to have seen them around on the CD. That's why Cheerios advertises, not to compel people to shell out for the cereal right then, but to get them to think twice when they pass up Cheerios on the cereal aisle.
AOL established themselves by making it as easy as possible to get started (note that long-term ease of use isn't quite as important to this equation because of how hard it is to change ISP's, move home pages, etc. for the newbie). They even made it free to get started, for pete's sake. Their ads were so ubiquitous that people began to think of them as the Internet. Recall Scary Spice's "I want an Internet. Can I have that one?"
Walt
Never heard of it. Don't have a CD. Not sure which distro to choose. Don't feel like d/l a copy. Not sure if they have supported hardware.
This is the biggest PITA, even for us experienced old-timers. Not sure what it can do for them. Afraid of the learning curve. Don't want to spend $$$ on an unknown OS.
When my friends and I used to get a 5-node network going, we ALWAYS had a problem with one machine not connecting to the game. Since we replaced with 3Com's all problems have gone away. My Linksys 5-port hub works great, however.
What 10/100 PCI and CardBus nics are tulip chips? I've been wanting to tryout tulip cards.
--
Lab test show that use of micro$oft causes deadly cancer in lab animals.
BSD all they way.
Now, if you're roaming down the isle and want turbolinux, you see the turbo linux box marked for 29.99 and this nic marked for 15.00 that happens to have turbo linux. So you just buy this copy of turbolinux and get a free nic!
--
Lab test show that use of micro$oft causes deadly cancer in lab animals.
Thats strange, I have several 10/100 8 and 16 port hubs in use and some older 10 only hubs, never had a problem. Only problem I ever saw with a bay hub is that an evil mac had fount a way to put lots of volts on the wire. The hub didnt like that. It died a horable death and so did 16 nics.
http://www.freebsd.org
AOL sends spam CD's through every route possible - they even send CD's just about every other week to the college computer center where I work. We offer them to the students that come in, but of course, they don't want it either - why should they? /is/ likely to grab a random Linux CD and install it?) but also to find out how much these CD's are being used - and hence if they are really getting something done by this little cantrip or if they should stop because it's just contributing to the already overgrown number of makeshift coasters.
The TurboLinux approach is to only send their stuff to their target market - small businesses who are networked. Of course, it's still a bit much, and I think that it would be a good idea TurboLinux includes an online registration system in their install program not only to get some marketing research data (just who
My friend bought an Ethernet card just 2 days ago. I think it was by SMC - it was a cheap 10/100 card for about 15$. What surprised me is the CD he handed me when he asked me to install the card - because he couldn't figure it out. Popping it in I saw directories like dosutils, img, root, etc... I looked at him and said, "Did it come with any instructions?" he pointed to the back of the box that had detailed instructions for linux and 1 sentence for windows. For windows it said "Windows will detect and configure the card automatically." sure... It didn't. I was stunned - I told him that the cd contained no windows drivers and instead was an TurboLinux CD. "It might contain Linux drivers", I said sarcastically. He didn't get it.
Joseph Elwell.
I bought a copy of Linux Journal(Btw slashdot, lego prefers it if you call it "Lego" not "Legos") since it had a copy of TurboLinux on it. So I installed it(awful setup process), and I still can't get anything to network on it. No matter how many times I try(and check the config), Apache won't start. oh well. Back to Redhat I guess.
Maybe i'm missing a link in this chain... Does Moammar Quaddafi only buy Linksys cards? (preffered by 4 out of 5 dictators with ridiculous moustaches...)
On a more serious note, part of the point of the freedom of free software is that it's blind to political differences. The GPL says anybody can use, modify, and otherwise enjoy the software. It does not say that only [white upper-middle class moderate capitalist mildly-christian intellectuals with big mouths].
Nobody's politics should keep them from running Linux. If their politics are as evil as you propose (i'm not saying i support these guys, i'm just saying that even if they are flaming assholes, they still have a right to run whatever OS they want...), then it is the responsibility of their people to overthrow them and start over, not yours or not mine.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
what?
I guess I could use some new coasters. I don't really see how this is going to be effective for anyone invovled.
Not the most brilliant move I've seen this week.
For what it's worth, the card cost $15, and there was a $29 TurboLinux about an aisle away at the CompUSA. I still like my Debian & FreeBSD, but it was a neat gimmick. And since the DE4x5 chipset wasn't listed on the box, it was a convincing cue that there'd be driver support for the card.
I see a lot of people comparing these CDs to the AOL ones. And, of course, the same applies to Corel, who will be (or are they already?) bundling their distributions with certain motherboards. But keep in mind that AOL is as popular as it is today primarily BECAUSE of all those free CDs. Even if most people throw them away, there will still be some who try it out. This is exactly the kind of push Linux needs to increase its userbase. Keep in mind that right now, most people using Linux are using it on servers. This could be an effective way of getting more people to try it on their desktops. Next, we need to start seeing Linux bundled in magazines and mass-mailed out to individuals, just like AOL did. All we need is a company ready to put the money into this.
Also, I like seeing the variety of distros doing these things. I'd rather not see any one distro capture the entire market.
--
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
L1NUX SUCKZ FI17HY M0N]
thank you.
^M is a carriage return
^H is a backspace
I want to see BeOS come with the Voodoo4.
Problem with bundling is, it easily becomes product tying. Say this $15 Linksys card jumps to $20 or $25 on TurboLinux reimbursement: I've been buying Linksys because it's cheap and works, but suddenly it's not as cheap. If Linksys has a competitor that stays at $15, I'll just buy theirs, but what if the competitor bundles with Caldera in response? Bam! Suddenly it's impossible to buy a network card without buying an operating system too, even if you don't need one! And this is product tying, a customer-hurting form of market failure. (In this case it subsidizes an emerging market [Linux distributions] by gouging an existing one [network cards].) TANSTAAFL, folks, buy what you need and be suspicious if things are only sold in packs.
"If they wanted to try Linux, they probably would have already. "
Your making some assumptions here.
1-You're assuming they've heard about Linux (believe it or not).
2-You're assuming they have the time to change their configuration to Linux (think a very busy person).
3-You're assuming that they're premitted to change the present configuration to Linux (PHB's comes to mind).
For 1 the bundled product will take care of that.
For 3 they could try it on their home system and then make recommendations to the PHB's.
2 is a big maybe. maybe he/she could find the time, maybe not.
If you only bought a network card based on what it said on the box, it doesn't say much for you intelligence. The Netgear PCMCIA cards are fully supported by Linux just like the Linksys card. You should have bought a card on its merits, not just because it touted your favorite OS. Thats like buying Office just because Microsoft makes it... Oh wait.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I am a Libertarian, okay? Big difference. I'm in favor of freedom and human rights, not liberal pseudo-science and welfare bullshit.
All I'm saying is that I'm opposed to giving North African dictators special consideration WRT Linux. This is a welfare program, giving out free (as in beer) copies of Linux disks to North Africans. Are we doing this in the USA? No. Are we doing this in Europe? No. We're only doing it in North Africa. I'd like to know what the reasoning is for one thing, but regardless of the reasoning, we just shouldn't be doing it!
I don't care if Qaddafi buys his own copy of Linux, and I don't care if he downloads it. That's what the rest of us do, and that's fine. As you say, freedom is the issue here. I'm only opposed to handing out free hard media to dictatorial regimes. They're getting some special consideration that they certainly don't deserve; these are dictators mind you, some of them Islamic dictators with the death penalty for any crime you can think of.
I say we should treat everybody equally. No handouts. Handouts only serve to demoralize and disable the people who get them. If the people of North Africa are ever going to rise up and claim their right to freedom, they're not going to get there by depending on handouts from the USA.
How can anyone complain about bundling Linux with hardware? Many people that I know don't run Linux because they've:
Bundling Linux with a NIC or LAN-in-a-Box package is great. Not only do you get hardware that will run on Linux, you get the OS as well. This will undoubtedly increase Linux's presence in the desktop and server market.
People are comparing AOL's CD distribution scheme with the Linux OS bundles. I view this opinion as flawed. Linux bundles are not mailed to every household, they are not included in most new PC purchases, etc. Additionally, I'm certain that the AOL CD marketing scheme has been wildly successfull. Otherwise, AOL would have stopped long ago since it does cost money to press and disseminate the CD's.
In closing, let me state that the Linux bundles hurt no one and may introduce people to Linux. In other words, it's a Good Thing(tm).
"Me, Myself, and I" -- De La Soul
yeah bsd r00lz it has no 5ploitz
First, I like Linksys for a number of reasons, mainly that they state on the box "Linux supported". I always make it a point now to only buy hardware with the 'L' word in plain view. A few weeks ago I was in Best Buy looking at PCMCIA cards and had to choose between a Net Gear card which said "Windows, and other operating systems" and a Linksys which explicitly stated "Linux". Who got my money? Linksys of course!
Secondly, something I noticed at the Linux Demo Day we just had - people were amazed that we were giving them a complete operating system for free. They were walking out of the Microsoft show into the throng of friendly smiling Linux folks. They had just been told that they were going to have to pony up $500 for a buggy as hell piece of software, and here we were handing out a very worthy competitor. Hell, a lot of people even came to the show just so they could get a CD which they read about in the Kansas City Star.
People want to try Linux. Will they keep using it? I don't know. I hope they do, and I am going to do my best to see that they are happy running it and will be there to answer their questions. I am sure they will enjoy it. Linksys is helping to spread the word here. Sure, people are going to mess up their systems, but to that I say "big deal!" I can't even begin to tell you the number of times I have messed up my system because I did something stupid and boneheaded. But another way to look at it is this... When I ran Windows I would reinstall the OS every 6 months. After six months the system would come to a crawl. That is part of my normal MO here at work too - reinstall it at least 2 times a year on every desktop. If you don't you are asking for trouble from all the absolute crap that gets in there and clogs it up.