Slashdot Mirror
Stormix Technologies Shut Down
avidwriter@excite.com writes: "Linux Today is reporting that the phone lines to Stormix have been disconnected, and the Web site isn't accepting orders. Looks like another Linux vendor is down for the count." So, I think we'll officially pronounce Stormix dead. Some of the FTP sites are still carrying Stormix ISO's, so if you're looking for an easy way to install Debian on a machine, better get them while you can.
I think the 1U thing came out just as they were going bust. Anyone know if they actually shipped? They looked nice in a coblt-y RAQ kinda way.
...j
Posted by polar_bear:
Yeah, and it's a shame that Stormix is going under. Stormix installs pretty easily on laptops and other computers... I really liked their install and management tools. Granted, I could get Debian to run on the same computers, but configuring sound and printers is way easier with Stormix. (I've found one or two instances, though, where Stormix would bomb during the install...but Debian just plowed through).
Frankly, I think Stormix got burned by jumping straight into retail and by getting into bed with distributors like Ingram-Micro (they own Buy.com and have a bad tendency to let Buy sell stuff at cost - which screws over all the other retailers...) and they had some over-generous rebates trying to rapid-build market share.
All-in-all, though, I think their heart was in the right place, figuratively speaking.
Too much significance should not be read into this, though - many businesses fail, especially in new markets. Hell, I used to live in a small town that had a number of mom 'n' pop diners fail one after another - not because the market for diners or food was weak, but because a succession of poor businesspeople opened restaurants that they didn't know how to run. Eventually, a decent manager got hold of the place and has been running a diner successfully for five or six years...
Anyway, I hope the folks I've worked with at Stormix have managed to find new jobs. They deserve some luck.
I think for a company that deals in Linux to be successful, you need to be able to tag along with an already successful firm.
Red Hat Software lucked out because their distribution of Linux has become pretty much the de facto distribution, used by such big companies as Dell Computer, Compaq, IBM, and so on.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Good point, but we still don't need dozens of distro's just because people have different installation preferences... just more flexible intallers, really.
They're all basically the same and all the codes available, there's no real reason for all the redundany's in distros. Everyone should just suck it up and work collaberatively rather than competitively and attack the target(s) (servers and eventually desktops) together in one unified strike rather than 200 little skirmish's
I blame that on the marketing department.
Even today, i'm not sure what exactly they have to offer (though I do know about their firewall stuff). More important is the fact that I don't know of any reason why I would choose Stormix over another product.
It's sad to admit it, but the marketing department really needs to get into faces and get stuff out there. I don't remember reading any product reviews or anything like that. Did they send out free copies to anyone for reviewing purposes? If not, maybe they should've.
Anyhow, one company going down doesn't make that much of a dent in the scene. You still got the heavy hitters like Ximian and Redhat out there, and so long as interest remains, that's all that matters.
Cheers,
Coplan
I wonder if $3000 from IBM would help the company? We've found a new profit model!
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
What does Progeny offer that Debian does not? From what I read, it seems to be a friendly installer and support services. Since the friendly installer is GPL'd, will Debian reassimilate it?
cpeterso
I have two (kind of three) Stormix boxes right now - I was using Mandrake for a while but Stormix seemed to handle detection of things on my really old P166 a lot better.
So what made me stick with Stormix even for machines Mandrake installed fine on? As many people point out quite often here, "Apt" is about as nice as package management gets under Linux.
The great thing is, even though Stormix the company may be gone, and the Stormix site for apt updates is gone, I really don't care - I just pointed my sources list to the Debian site (as well as the Debian security site) and ran a dist-upgrade with no trouble at all.
Stormix also had some nice administration programs and great installation, but really what I like most about any Debian based distribution is how easy it is to maintain even if the company that originated the distribution has problems.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's the really funny part: LinuxToday is already Slashdotted, but Stormix is doing fine. I'm not sure what that says about each company's web servers, or their business model, but I find it hilarious that the dead company has better web staying power.
What's your damage, Heather?
ok, I'll bite: since when all debian packages are distributed source-only?
If you so desire, you can download source RPMs for RedHat and compile those, or you can install the binaries. The same goes for debian, most people install the binaries, but if you want to, you can compile from source packages.
Disclaimer: I am currently running an old debian at home, and RH 7 at work.
-- the cake is a lie
The story said that the site is not accepting orders not that the site is down. If you go to the site, go to the shopping area and try to order stuff, it says that the order section is down 'for maintenance'
The rest of the site is up, and the story never implied otherwise.
-- the cake is a lie
Damn those people with principles. Why can't everybody be like me.
War is necrophilia.
I believe Slackware makes a profit.
"Slackware has always made money (who else producing a commercial distribution can say that?)"
See Patrick's post regarding Slackware and WindRiver. And Slashdot article on said subject.
Now admittedly, I don't know how MUCH money they've been making, but they do it by having a distro that is stable and secure [well, compared to most other distros]. I've found Slackware to be "short, sweet and to the point" Because of this I think more people are willing to fork over the $$ to get the distro. It's the only distro that I've liked enough to pay for anyway.
Ender
Nothing to see here
Unlike Corel Linux, Progeny Debian not a fork from Debian (it's more like a commercial `front-end' for Debian), so you can apt-get from one to the other and there aren't any serious compatibility problems, AFAIK. If Progeny goes out of business, it won't really affect anyone (from the software standpoint; support is another issue) short of a change to sources.list.
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Mandrake ... loads and loads of applications
Last time I checked (2001-Apr-20), Debian had the most packages. See below.
zed:~# grep "^Package:" /var/lib/dpkg/available | sort | uniq | wc -l
7002
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Yeah, and that's what we expect from RMS. That's why a lot of us say "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version": we trust RMS to have the same rigid standards as he has always had.
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If you're looking for another easy to install and use Debian based distro, try Progeny, mentioned here less than two weeks ago.
You can download ISO's and also read the instructions for upgrading from Potato (Debian r2.2) here.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried it yet (due to a lack of time).
Stormix crashed and burned on my system the three times I tried installing it, and I didn't have anything too obscure in there either. Potato and Slink are both fairly awkward to install, but you can usually get to a shell prompt easily enough.
However, I personally take a wee bit of umbrage at the "easy way to install Debian" bit in the main article, because it is most definitely NOT the only way to do it. And Slashdot is what put me onto the alternative in the first place.
In my opinion, the Holy Grail of Linux Distros, the one that does what even Mandrake (7.2, I haven't been able to get 8.0 yet) can't do for ease of install, is Progeny Debian GNU/Linux.
Note that I don't use this on a day-to-day basis, mostly because of the blood-sweat-and-tears I've put into my SuSE boxen, but this is THE single easiest-to-install distribution out there that I've come across. It pegged ALL of my hardware - even my Logitech Cordless trackball, which SuSE's quite excellent SaX and SaX2 programs could not - first go around, and was easier to install than Windows.
Yes. Easier to install than Windows. Not for us, the average geek, but for them, the average Windows user.
Now, there are a few problems/bugs with the Progeny that I played with - namely, minor bugs in the installs package selection program that causes things to go wonky if you unselect a package in Expert Install - but overall, it's smooth as hell. One of my friends at work tried it after I suggested it to him; he installed in in about half an hour, got it up and running, and grabbed Ximian Gnome, and he's happier than hell. It's based off of a snapshot of Woody, so whether the installer is Woody's or Progeny's I don't know. What I do know is, if I ever need to do a system reinstall, SuSE will only remain on my server, and Progeny will be my desktop. SuSE's been good to me, but Progeny is unbelievable.
Before you wonder, no, I don't work for Progeny. But there's quite a few Debian notables that do.
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
The biggest company behind any distro is RedHat, and they make almost no money off sales. They try and offer support contracts and make their money there, but even that is slim
I'm far too lazy to go read RedHat's public financial information, but I always assumed they made money from support. I don't mean the "Joe Consumer calls us up and we help him install X-Windows" bullshit end-user support that no-one on earth enjoys being subjected to in any situation. I mean real support, to people with money who need support, and not just a clue stick.
Like, the kind of support where IBM says "We wan't to sell a laptop with Linux pre-installed. Help us validate and test the hardware and driver list, and help us keep the driver list up to date for the next three years." Or, the kind of support where Compaq says "we want to sell more Linux severs. Help us improve the drivers and utility software for our Compaq SmartArray RAID controllers." Or, even the kind of support where Oracle says "help us validate our software on future versions of the Linux operating system and future versions of glibc."
If any Linux vendor is trying to make money by end user sales, or by selling support to end users, it should be clear to anyone that Linux vendor is going to be royally fucked. I believe there can be a great deal of value in writing, maintaining, and improving free software -- if you find someone who believes the existance of that software is valuable to them. I can't see any value in selling free software. It's not compatible with the shrink wrapped market.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Having the source, browsing it, and compiling it to me seems to be the way to go for hardcore UNIX hackers. They would miss compiling things and wouldn't trust the software as much on a Red Hat or Mandrake system.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
If you can't convince the market or the consumers you exist and are worth buying, why bother producing?
On the other hand, there are a whole bunch of reasons I prefer Debian to Redhat;
Debian has a better debug and design cycle (read longer and more thorough) such that it works on more systems and works more reliably.
Of course this is all word of mouth; I run only one Debian system, but I failed to get Red Hat, Mandrake, and Caldera to install on it. I tried Debian because it was touted as more reliable and better debugged, though almost an entire release cycle behind, and found that it worked.
Debian also has a nice update/package manager, apt, though a bit cryptic in UI, is very useful. Network aware and dependency aware! It's cool.
So Debian has a place; if a company existed that managed to market it correctly (just those two above make TCO for corporations much smaller) I'm sure it could survive, but you're right, it does boil down to marketing.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
I predict that in the near future, all but three Linux distribution companies will be out of business, and they will rename their distros FreeLinux, OpenLinux, and NetLinux.
Although they are dead, Debian could very easily use the programs that they wrote, assuming they are under the GPL...
I run RedHat myself, though from what I here they had a nice GUI configuratin tool. The best thing is they don't have to totaly die, Debian can pick up there tools and sort of keep them Alive for ever....
On a related note an interesting Idea for commercial software companies is to make it so that your software is released under the GPL/BSD Licence when/if you go under.... Like for instance if Corel dies, I'd like to continue using the first Program I ever used: WordPerfect...--Volrath50
Yes and for a relative newbie like myself, I think Storm Linux was much easier the install and run "out of the box".
I loved Storm Linux's GUI install, it was at least up to par with Red Hat and Mandrake 7.x in my honest opinion. Stormpkg is real nice also. Too bad the package in unstable is currently broken, at least as of last weekend.
I would be interested in seeing a company that makes a profit from a linux distro. The biggest company behind any distro is RedHat, and they make almost no money off sales. They try and offer support contracts and make their money there, but even that is slim. If you look at the numbers, they made a bunch of cash in their IPO and used it to pick up Cygnus, which actually _does_ make money off consulting and support contracts.
Small scale distros will have trouble surviving in the end though, because there is no profit model. That is the only way they relate to dotcoms.
-- Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an art.
This is a good thing. The job market for geeks at the moment is still pretty tight. Better to lay off staff while there are jobs to be had at profitable concerns than to wait for a real recession to hand out pink slips.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
so if you're looking for an easy way to install Debian on a machine, better get them while you can.
The only actual version of Linux I could see withstanding the storm is sadly Redhat. Most other versions of Lin have crappy marketing teams.
As for installing Debian, why should someone use Debian versus any other version of Linux out there? The underlying facts remain, Linux is Linux no matter which version you use its all core code, some are easier to use than others, nothing more.
Its this method of thinking that disrupts the company's earnings in the future. Why would you hype up Debian and not Redhat, when in essence at the bare bones they're the same OS?
Factors such as these (judging one over the ther) have a lot of repurcussions on those small companies. PR people, marketers look at what the industry is up to, and fortunately fro Redhat they looked ahead and made more marketing pushes than any other versions of Lin around.
So another Lin company went under... Big deal, where was Slashdot's posting when Stampede all of the sudden disappeared?
No thanks I'll stick to my BSD's.
© Pimpfolio
360 degrees of Karma
Who the hell needs marketing? Example: Debian itself has basically zero marketing. Yet it's one of the more popular distros, and it's widely used.
More widely used by whom? Hobbyist? Sure developers that spent their time and effort, are sure glad to know hobbyist who often dl for free to tinker with their OS like their work. Now if only those same hobbyist could help pay for their work to keep it going.
Same with Slackware. The best marketing is word of mouth, and THAT is what matters in this community.
I think you should wake up and smell the coffee brewing. Sure word of mouth is great. Try explaining the differences between an unknown version of Linux your thinking of putting on a production network of your client, to your bosses who only have heard of Redhat (who you could actually get support and not wonder if they're going under next week).
Red Hat may have deep pockets, but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily succeed any more than anybody else.
You're kidding me? So far RedHat looks to be the last nab standing in the long run, unless Corel can make something happen. (which Corel truly sucks at. All they basically have is a name at this point, and if I'm not mistaken they may have already dropped out of the Linux game)
So who's next with an unsupportive rambling?
360 degrees of Karma