Doug Michels & Ransom Love speak pre-Caldera Forum

A reader writes "Now that SCO Forum has been rebadged as Caldera Forum, I decided to duck out of it this year. But according to this interview, Ransom Love doesn't want to make too many changes. The same cannot be said for Linux and Unix though, where it looks like he's pretty much given up on Linux on the desktop except as a thin client with Tarantella. Coincidentally, there's an accompanying interview with Doug Michels, where he talks about life post-Unix. Seems like the two companies are pretty tight. " Update: 08/17 6:29 PM by M : Jason Perlow wrote in with his review of OpenUNIX 8.

Comments

Linux shouldn't be on the desktop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's drop the stupidity of the old PC client/server model. Although that model is much more sane with Unix, it still isn't very scalable or low-maintence.

A thin client, or hybrid thin-client approach is the answer in most corporate environments. We all saw what a city in FL is doing in terms of Linux on the desktop - served apps, much lighter weight clients. This is cost-effective and reliable.

For the home user, yes, Linux on the desktop is a great idea. But it can't be a replacement for Windows on the home desktop - that's throwing hard work at a bad idea. Instead, the focus should be on hiding the user from the complexities of application installation, etc. Windows fails at that. My dad has no idea how to install applications, or why he would want to. We can't be successful if Linux on the desktop is as hard as Windows on the desktop.

Of course, for tech-heads, Linux on the desktop is still viable. But we're not most people.

"Thin Client"

[fm6]

Is it just me, or does the way Love (and others) calls a graphics terminal a "Thin Client" make you nauseous? First, the terminal doesn't have any real intelligence, so how can you call it a client? Second, do we really want to move back to the old time-sharing model, where you can't do anything without the approval of computer center (an ancient term we'll probably have to ressurect)? There's a reason we used to call them "The High Priests of a Low Cult."

Is it just me?

[thelexx]

Or is Caldera becoming about as irrelevant as a company can get? The thrust of their Linux strategy now seems to be, "Um yeah, it'll run great in our terminal software for Windows users." Also there is this gem:

"As the desktop becomes the browser, you will see Linux become the predominant platform on devices that connect to the Internet."

/em-foghorn That boy, I say, that boy needs to stay outta the sun for a while!

LEXX