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Stormix Bankruptcy

Posted by michael on from the for-whom-the-bill-tolls dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "So has the news that Stormix has filed for bankruptcy been covered? I was surprised to get a form letter in the mail today from Deloitte & Touche saying they filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 17. And they owe me $20." The Stormix users mailing list has some information, and Newsforge has a summary. I'm typing this on a Stormix system right now, so I hope someone picks it up and maintains the distro.

9 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. This is good news by fmaxwell · · Score: 4
    In the early 1900s, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of U.S. automobile manufacturers. As the market for cars became larger and competition between brands became greater, that number shrunk to the few that we have today. Brands that were weaker because of price, engineering, or marketing, went belly-up. I think that we are seeing the same thing in the Linux distro market. The big players (RedHat, Mandrake, SUSE, etc.) are still solid while the 2nd and 3rd tier distributions are starting to fade away.

    While competition in the marketplace is a good thing, confusion is not. A customer deciding which OS to use has two current choices from Microsoft (Me and 2000). If he is a home user, he gets Me and if he is a business user, he gets 2000 (or so says Microsoft). This same customer is faced with a confusing array of Linux distros, each claiming to be the best. SUSE, RedHat, Mandrake, Corel, Caldera, TurboLinux, Debian, Slackware, and Storm Linux all spring to mind. And there are many more. Unfortunately, these distributions are not all compatible with one another. Someone familiar with Mandrake might struggle with Debian, for instance, and not be able to find utilities and applications that he has come to rely on. Installing a sound card on RedHat is not done in the same was as installing one on Caldera. This type of problem frustrates and confuses end users.

    While my sympathies go out to the employees and creditors of Stormix, I think that this is a natural solidifying of a market and is a sign that Linux is becoming a mainstream product.

  2. Re:Stormix was not a parasite by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4
    No, Stormix was not a parasite. They GPL-ed their software and their package manager is now part of Debian. They had real, shipping product, not mock-ups like LinuxOne. It happens that they had one really bad executive, and an otherwise good team. But that's not what sunk them, the capital market did.

    Bruce

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    Bruce Perens.
  3. Not a good month for Debian-based distributions by locutus074 · · Score: 3
    So this month, we receive news that Stormix is declaring bankruptcy while Corel is selling off their operating system division. Not a good month. :)

    I hope that people don't get the wrong impression about Debian from this. It's really kick-ass; but I'd prefer a little more eye candy. What I'd really like to see is something like a Debian-based Mandrake. That'd be really cool.

    It's a damn shame; I used Stormix for a bit, and it showed promise.

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    We have fought the AC's, and they have won.

  4. Life sometimes sucks. by pc486 · · Score: 3

    The fact that Storm Linux seems to be going bankrupt is not something that should seem unusual. There is quite a bit of competition in the distro world of Linux for a relitivly small market; RedHat, Slackware, SuSe, Turbo, Debian, and other distros provide stiff competition. The good news is that bankruptcy isn't the end of a company. I'm just hoping that Storm Linux will contiune to put out products. Competition is more often than not good for an industry as it premotes the growth of Linux by providing selection of a product that meets one's needs.

  5. Sorry to hear, but the Software will Go On! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4
    Stormix is a Debian derivative. Right now it is being very difficult to get capital, which is what probably sunk them. However, Progeny is doing well, and with Ian Murdock (the Debian founder) and a number of the lead Debian developers there, Progeny will carry the torch for Debian in the business world. I am associated with the company and am thus prejudiced, although I am not their official spokesperson and I don't work for them - this oosting is opinion.

    Reviews of the Progeny install have been very good (go to ftp.progeny.com/pub/progeny/ and download the CD image), and this ease-of-use addition will be a real boost to Debian.

    I'm sorry to hear about Stormix, but there's been an ex-Storm person at Progeny for a while, and I hope the other good people from Storm get to move over.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  6. Lack of option by CAIMLAS · · Score: 3
    I was just thinking today how much I was looking forward to the next installment of Stormix while helping someone fdisk their windows partition and install Mandrake 7.2. While KDE2 looks as slick as penguin poo, I had some issues with it in general. Dependancies. This individual had found a program on freshmeat that he wanted to install, in RPM form. Ok, good so far - he doesn't have to compile it. That's a big roadblock for beginners who are used to foolish click-click-click-done installations. So, we 'rpm -Uvh' the program, and we get dependancy errors. A pain in the butt, but we get through it. But the point is, it's a huge pain - there was a tree about 3 or 4 deep of dependancies I had to pull from the CD. I couldn't just 'apt-get install libpng' (for example) I had to find everything that that paticular item needed, etc etc. It turned him off slightly.

    Now, Stormix didn't really have that issue. IMO, the main issue that Stormix had was that you had no option on initial install via the penguin-poo slick GUI to install, say, more advanced programs. You had to find them on the CD afterwards and install them, and there wasn't a large array of programs available via initial install. IMNSHO, they could have simply had the 'extra' programs under a second sub-menu, say, as 'extras', or 'more programs', with a notice that the main programs would not be enough for most people, and then go on to label the 'extra' programs under a category as say, "CD Burning Tools" and install them all in that manner. I'd say that was quite possibly the biggest fallacy of Stormix, as far as usability is concerned.

    I was thinking today that, if Stormix realeased, say, Stormix 2001, they would likely base it off Mandrake, but base it off of apt, possibly with their own custom db of packages. (i586, anyone? I certainly notice a huge speed difference with optimized packages.)

    If that were to be done - a apt based Mandrake distro with a more sensical installer for beginners (keepin' it technical for us geeks at the same time) I think everyone could be happy. (RedHat wouldn't have much to hold to that - what got them in the lead was their RPM w/ early acceptance of X and such.)

    *sigh* Well, I hope Stormix continues to be worked on by someone. If for no other reason, that boot logo was tatz. ;)

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    CAIMLAS

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    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  7. Linux Linux Linux... by mindstrm · · Score: 3

    Just my note to all those burgeoning 'linux admins' out there..... especially those who argue over what the 'best' distro is all the time, or what one they will use 'forever' or 'from now on'.

    Some facts:

    1) There have been several linux distros over the years, and have had a rise and fall (and rise and fall etc...) in popularity. lsl. mcc. slackware. debian. redhat. Suse. + all the spinoffs/oneoffs...

    2) There's more to unix on the x86 than Linux... and more platforms than x86.

    Now.. really, instead of all these efforts.. why not put some effort into some actual computing instead of arguing about what's a better distro, or tweaking your desktop for the 1000th time? Do a bit of code. Ever installed FreeBSD before? OpenBSD? NetBSD? Go scam a copy of Solaris x86 and learn what it's all about... I'm not saying any are as 'good' as linux at the things you probably expect them to be.. but...

    What I'm saying is.. it seems to me a lot of pro-linux people nowadays are getting to be as bad as any other OS-worship crowd.. they paint themselves into a little corner instead of looking at computing in general. You think it's a big linux world.. but it's not.. there is a lot more out there.

  8. Sad news, great distro, fantastic home-groen apps. by benmhall · · Score: 3

    This is really sad.

    While the original Storm Linux was a little rough, and had many installation issues, their newest version (Rain 2.0.6) is absolutely fantastic.

    The installer is very slick, and SAS asn StormPkg are great tools! I use them all the time. I installed Stormix and immediately upgraded to Woody without a hitch.

    My question is why doesn't the Debian community pick up their great stormpkg apt front-end and run with it? All of their stuff was GPL'd. To be honest, I really can't see the difference between what Stormix was and what Progeny is hoping to be.

    As for someone else picking it up and maintaining it, I really hope that Debian takes a close work at the work they did. It was great.

    Stormix was what got me on to Debian. Since then I've taken the time to get accustomed to it, and I honestly believe that I'll stick with a Debian based distro forever.

    This is very sad. They had a very good product. I wish the people well in their future endeavours.

    Nice T-shirt!

    Ben

  9. Too bad... by Tom7 · · Score: 4

    Too bad... they had a nice, uh, logo.