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Turbolinux Not Dead Yet
Abdul Nabi writes "I found this article on Linux Today which is a response from Turbolinux to the recent rumors of a shutdown. The responds contends that they are restructuring rather than shutting down." Ya know, I can't
think of a single person that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that has
something to do with their problems.
"We expect to be able to satisfy our US customers' needs for support and future products.
"All three of them we still have."
However, if I remember correctly, aren't they pretty large in Asia, specifically China?
I will buy stock first thing monday! I am going to make a FORTUNE!!
I frankly cannot think of anybody who runs TurboLinux either. I know many people recieved a copy of TL install media from their purchases of a Linksys router. I wondered about this; if somebody is buying a "router" unit why would they need linux? Seems a bit contradictory to me, as the most useful trend for "ordinary" people to have a need to use linux would be as a firewall for their home network but the linksys device already acts as one. Bizzare ploy. Oh well. RIP I say.
..relate in any way to profitability for a Linux company?
No business model, no product that differentiates significantly from anyone elses distribution and no followers. What matters is "no business model" more than anything else.
Of course if your running a club and not a business the "no followers" matters...
at least with me. The last I heard of them was when I bought copies of TurboLinux Workstation 3 and Corel Linux (unknown version) because rebates promised they would end up being free-or-almost, and I wanted more distros to play with. However, neither company ever sent rebate checks. I assumed the worst, and decided not to bother uninstalling SuSE (6?) for testing. Turned out to be a good decision - I'm currently on 8.0 Pro, and SuSE will be my only *nix distro for my PCs (I use Open BSD on my SPARC) and my main *nix environment until I get a Mac.
Get off my launchpad!
giving them any market share outside of the pacific rim, turbolinux might have a small following of users in the u.s. and europe desiring proven IA-64 support (they were first to the linux market) or a really nice stable desktop for application development (ok, so no one i know personally ...). i get the impression they are part of united linux because of the strength of their usability - but SuSE is so gosh-darn usable i don't see that being their contribution to the group. their focus on the rim and a largely marginalized sector of this century's growth in professional and business computing is going to make it tough for them to make it on their own or as part of united linux.
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
I thought that I remembered people saying that LinuxGram specialized in doomsaying. Actually, I seem to remember some suggesting less wholesome motives, but I haven't seen any proof.
Still, they do seem to push rumors that spread fear without doing much, if any, verification. For all I can tell, the "5 anonymous sources" could all be the same person. And if the source is truely anonymous, then for all they could tell, the same. In fact, the source could be the reporter. Or some PR hireling from some company. Of course, anonymity comes in various grades, but the summaries that I saw just said anonymous. (I didn't want to give them as much as a click for this story.)
Don't know that I should be proud of that though... I went to do some maintenance on the streaming computer for IIT's radio station, and I found it was running Turbo Linux. Unfortunately it's still giving us problems, and I may yet switch over to something else. Still looking at my options, though.
On the bright side, before I had to start messing with it, it had an uptime of over 10 months!
-Patrick
"I'm not quite dead yet.." :-)
Hey, isnt it inevitable that some distros will go the way of the the dodo? I cannot think of anyone who runs turbolinux either, and in fact, I rarely se it mentioned on the web at the various websites.
I guess the real question is, what is the business model going to be for a distro company that wants to cash out going to be? Will TurboLinux be able to sell their users to Red Hat?
If you want your favorite commercial Linux distro to survive then you'd better give it more support than Lip Service.
Have you been downloading those Mandrake ISO CDs? Great! If you are poor and/or from an under-developed country then enjoy them in true spirit of the Linux commons. BUT, if you live in the developed countries and have disposable income each month then do your part and purchase a boxed set at least once each year. Total up the license costs of the Windows OS and apps you would have to purchase to obtain what comes in most Linux distro boxed sets and compare your annual costs.
APP Windows Linux
OS $200 $80
Office $200 $0 or $60 (SO)
CAD $$$$$ $0 to $100
Graphics $200 $0
Animation $$$$$$$ $0 to $$$$$
Educational $$$$$ $0 to $50
Math $800-$2000 $0 to $250
Science $$$$$$$ $0
GAMES $50@ $0 to $50@
AntiVirus $50+ N/A
Firewalls $50-$1000 $0
Network tools $$$$$ $0
etc...
Windows base costs are more than $1000. Mandrake 8.2 base cost is $80.
Let's ignore the crashes, lost data, stolen personal info, countless security holes, MS trojan apps that phone home or add and remove software from your box at Gate's whim.
Better bargins are hard to find.
While competition is a good thing, too much competition in a small market will kill some of the competitors.
I wonder how many commercial distros will be left in some years. RedHat, Suse, Debian of course, but others ?
Well, you'll have a steady flow of small/niche distros appearing and going bankcrupt soon after. But I doubt we'll see any other big wonks.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Basically, they are shutting down their US dependance to reduce cost. The US market is overcrowded with Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake and Caldera who all try to sell support and services, too. So Turbolinux is going back to their home market where the competition is not that stiff.
We've already seen this with SuSE back in August last year when they layed off 30 of their US staff.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=2333& lang=en&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
All the Mandrake User hope strongly that all the Linux companies, like Turbo Linux, will desappeare.
Thanks to that, Mandrake , the Best distro that ever, will become the strongest company in the Linux Market.
We hope that SuSE, the fucking German distro, Redhat, the distro made by stupid americans, and other will close down.
In a near future, Mandrake will hold the monopoly and will kick the ass of Microsoft and every stupid american softwares !
VOUS NE VOULEZ PAS DE NOS ROQUEFORT ET NOTRE VIN, MANDRAKE VA VOUS BOTTER LE CUL ET VA VOUS MONTRER CE QU'EST LA QUALITE FRANÇAISE : VIVE MANDRAKe, VIVE LA FRANCE !
How the hell can I be marked as a troll when its the friggin truth here? Ever used Turbo Linux? Its an awfull experience, and how. If you havent used Turbo Linux then you have no idea.
Turbolinux today denied rumors that its operations have "collapsed," and that its facilities in the US have shut down. The company acknowledged, though, that its US arm is undergoing a restructuring and a reduction in force, blaming the reorganization on the withdrawal of a still unidentified investor from a round of funding.
The US operations of Turbolinux remains open for business, a Turbolinux PR rep said today.
"Turbolinux continues to do business as a privately held, global software company," elaborated Turbolinux President and CEO Ly-thong Pham, in a written statement to Linux Today.
On the whole, Pham's statement refuted some portions of a report published yesterday in LinuxGram, but tended to corroborate some other statements in the report.
"In the final stages of a new round of funding, we experienced a last minute withdrawal by one of the investors. The results is that we have had to take immediate action to restructure our US operations," according to Pham.
Pham maintained that the restructuring affects US operations only, and does not impact on operations in the Asia-Pacific. Also in the US, a reduction in force has been effective since July 15. Turbolinux is "actively working on a revised business plan for the US operation," she contended.
"We expect to be able to satisfy our US customers' needs for support and future products. We plan to have more details about our US operations next month," according to Pham.
Heh - nice one. You're not marked as a troll yet but I'm sure that's the idea. BTW, why the hell is this comment marked off-topic?
I tried Turbo back in 2000, it was HORRIBLE. It seemed very much like a RedHat ripoff, with nothing extra. Plus, it didn't perform well for me..so I dropped it from my repertoire.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
thank you for remoderating up as funny, I dont know which jackass moderator thought it was a troll
I don't know of a single person I know that owns a Ferrari, so I guess they'll be going bankrupt soon!
Your OSDN cousins over at Linuxgram screwed up - face it!
I wonder when VA [insert latest name] will be going belly up? I don't know one person who ever bought the commerical version of SourceForge, so using the TurboLogic...
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
Thanks. Duno, prob because Taco is a Retart?
Debian, of course, is a non-commercial community supported distro.
Obviously, however, this doesn't mean it doesn't require an influx of money to support servers, website maintainence, bandwidth for downloads and so forth.
It would be interesting to see an article written up about the finances that go on behind a non-profit operating system, though.
I was recently in a bit of a sporting mood so I downloaded TurboLinux 7 workstation.. I wouldn't recommend it at all to anyone, it's terrible.. sorta seems like someone takes a linux kernel, installs windows on top of it and hands it to you.. I'm running a 1ghz p3 with 512mb of ram (PC133@Cas 2) and after a standard boot of it I had something like 33mb of ram free.. thats just terrible! my xp machine isn't even THAT bad.
"Maybe that has something to do with their problems. "
Or maybe it's because of the fact that they give their product away for free?
Ya know, I can't think of a single person that I know that runs LINUX, period. Maybe that has something to do with their problems.
I was using Turbolinux 6. :-)
Until I heard they were shuting operations down last week.
/. Where the truth
Taco sez:
...
> Ya know, I can't think of a single person
> that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that
> has something to do with their problems.
Oh, so if Taco knew some of their management team, they would be successful? Kinda like Larry Augustin?
hmm
Ya know, I can't think of a single person that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that has something to do with their problems.
Since when was CmdrTaco the be all and end all?
Come on - everybody who is capable of reasonable thinking knew that this just might be a restructure or that they are only closing American offices, or whatnot. Similar thing happened with SuSE and they still operate just fine. Well, maybe the fact that Taco doesn't know any TurboLinux users means that nobody runs it. And just maybe closing American offices is the same as going under. Until now I foolishly thought that these were not necessarily the same thing but I sure am glad that the better educated news reporters of slashdot enabled me to see the light. Gladly this is not exactly the first time that we see pure rumours posted as news. After all, who gives a damn whether news people check their facts or not?
"Ya know, I can't think of a single person that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that has something to do with their problems."
Isn't that what this Linux business is all about? Where anyone can build their own flavor of the OS, modify it, etc? Star-power shouldn't be a measure of a distribution's signifigance. Plus, I can think of several companies that have/have had "big names" and still tanked.
"liberty and justice for all those who can afford it"
This isn't exactly off-topic... Turbo Linux says it isn't dead, but it'll be stone dead in a moment, neh? It's just a badly played out metaphor/joke.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
TL ain't too bad ...
My company has something like 20 TL servers, 5 of which are using TurboCluster for clustered management (used to be more, but, now we use Tomcat and it does its own load management)...
We have not had any problems with the TurboLinux *nixware...
It was the first linux I installed myself, and it was almost amazing that the thing worked. I was using version 6, which was pretty tolerable once it was working.
It was a RedHat derivitive, and the utilites sometimes randomly ceased to work. The package management accounted for dependencies, but was so intertwined that even little installs would become huge downloads quickly.
I stopped using it when the various Turbolinux RPM mirrors ceased to exist, and when it's version of RPM became outdated verses the rpm packages that were becoming predominant.
After using it, I switched to Slackware, which I still happily use. Turbolinux was just too annoying and lacking as far as a userbase and support base for me to stay with it.
~geogeek
Yeah, like your friends are so special.
As far as I know Turbolinux is pretty 'big in Japan'. After Redhat and SuSE (in europe), they might even be the most 'sold' distribution.
---------------
Founder of the The Free Linux CD Project
It's sleeping.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Turbo to this day has an installer that can compete only with slackware and debian, if you noticed neither of those installers are actually what anyone would call "user friendly". But they weren't designed to be user friendly they were designed to install their distribution. Turbo's marketshare is in Asia and Southern America. Europe and the US see RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and Debian and think that the other distros of the past are dead.
Has anyone here every looked at the list of linux distributions out there today? It's not like there is a perfect distro for everyone. I wouldn't say Turbo was dead, just like I wouldn't say that and OSS project is dead. A dead OSS project is unknown because someone has forgotten about it. If there is at least one person who knows and uses a distro/software then it's not dead.
On a wee bit of a side note, if you want to count how success and whether or not something is alive by monetary values. How much money can one really expect to make on something that is free? I'm not trying to start a Open Source flamefest, but just identifying the original intent of Open Source, freedom. Can you put a price on freedom? I can't.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Ever since his porker fiance' began rimming his be all end all.
It's too bad, really. I remember running TurboLinux 6.0 and loving it. I gave up on them because a year went by and there wasn't anything new. Actually, that version of TruboLinux ran better for me than any other distro that I had tried at the time.
Man, I love that line. I'm going to try it:
"Dad, er. You know all that money you sent me? You know how I promised that it would last me the full term? Well, uh, I'm not broke *exactly*, but I'm currently restructuring. Yeah. And food would help the process, yes. I expect to be cashflow-positive by Q3 2003. "
- undoware.ca
Not to mention, it's tagged as redundant, yet it was posted five minutes before the other MP quotes. Sunday morning moderators must have no sense of humor...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You're in america though aren't you? As hard as it is to believe, America is not the center of the universe. Turbo Linux is mainly used outside of the US.
I have a bunch of turbo Linux copies that came with a bunch of ISA NICs that a coworker gave me.
Now I can beowulf my 486s and break the 200mhz barrier!!!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I laughed my ass off at that post. Ah well, I guess the mods haven't kicked their crack addiction yet.
Ya know, I can't think of a single person that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that has something to do with their problems.
Just because you aren't personally aware of something does not mean that it doesn't exist.
CmdrTacoKnowledge != { SumAllHumanKnowledge(); }Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
I can't think of a single person that I know that runs Connectiva. But that doesn't mean they're in trouble. Connective just isn't all that popular where I live (Britain). Similarly, Turbolinux isn't that popular stateside or here. But just like Connectiva is really popular in Brazil, Turbolinux is really popular in Korea, China, Japan and other areas of Asia.
/rant >
< rant > I know this is slashdot, but for some reason I was under the impression that the blokes who actually posted the stories had something at least partially resembling a clue. Maybe the reason that you don't know anybody who uses Turbolinux, dear poster, is that you almost certainly live in the states! Sigh. <
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
Turbolinux is dead, eh? Then why is their distribution preinstalled on servers from these manufacturers:
IBM x135, xSeries
Gateway
Compaq Proliant
HP (duh) tc2110 rc7100
NEC
Hitachi
Fujitsu
SGI
They are also working with these manufacturers to customize code in the kernel and various apps to increase performance / reliability under heavy load under specific configurations for specific applications.
This whole discussion is absurd, don't think it's time to retire the Turbolinux icon yet, Captain Burrito.
Google search Turbolinux+preinstalled+server would give you a free clue, but then what would everyone do with all their spare time...
Why aren't you people coding?
BTW I was using Turbolinux as a desktop before I relegated the machine to more mundane tasks, and describing the distro as 'horrible' is just silly. I actually found it much more flexible at install time than Slackware (in 2.2.x days), although with the five-disk-Slack install now there are lots of module options etc...
Home users trolling about what is largely a server distribution is again, silly (slaps your wrist)...
fdisk3hs
Results from the October 2000 and July 2001 polls are here:
Oct. 2000
July 2001
Over the years, Red Hat, Debian, and Mandrake have consistantly been the top distros of choice...
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
Surely you're not suggesting that the hordes of Free Software/Open Source users actually PAY for any of the software that they use. Don't you remember? "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!". Nevermind that RENT WANTS TO BE PAID or FOOD WANTS TO BE BOUGHT, but when it comes to software all the rules in the universe are reversed and those who write software for a living are not supposed to actually be able to make a living. Those lucky few programmers are supposed to live on forestland communes where they forage for fruits and berries while their latest kernel compiles with the -hunger flag.
Frankly you disgust me by implying that we should enable certain free software developers to live in dignity via getting paid for what they most likely spent 4 years in college learning what to do. Only EVIL people such as Doctors, Entertainers, Lawyers, OTHER kidns of Engineers and such go to college to get ew... PAYING jobs and professions. The most honorable Computer Science graduates however nobly sacrifice their highly marketable skills for the greater good. To suggest that a CS grad should be able to afford moving himself or his family out of his mother's basement is an affront to the FSF, GNU, Slashdot and the entire Free Software Community! SHAME ON YOU SIR!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
This is an ex-distro!
Fjord, what a l4m0r. You fucking kiss ass bitch. Taco doesn't care about you, nor does he care about the readers of this site, although the readers make the site. Open your eyes, baby.
Redhat:
1998 - Lost $3 million
1999 - Lost $6 million
2000 - Lost $42 Million
2001 - Lost $86 million
2002 - Lost $140 million (Redhat's fiscal 2002 has already ended)
Mandrake:
Lost 3.6 million euros in the 1st 6 months of this year, lost 7 million euros in the 6 months before that.
Yep, that "give the product away for free and make money on service and support" businesss model is really working well.
Open Source is great for amateur programming geeks who like to tinker with code, but it is failing miserably as a business model.
I think it is about time they merge and get more done instead of wasted efforts. I am not saying "make one Linux distro", but that there are many that are pretty much alike, and they would be stronger from either cooperating or merging. It was save some people that could do better stuff (write documentation is no 1 on my list any day).
Oh my friend, is that perhaps because you live in the US, and Turbolinux is strong in the Asian Market ?
Cheers,
Don Inodoro
You want free software? You get free software. No biggie. As long as the GPL (and other open licenses) exist, Linux and like will always be available.
The point I see about Linux distros, is that they package up what you need for convenience sake. Don't want to support a Linux distro? Fine. Don't expect it to stick around.
Even RMS doesn't have a problem charging people for convenience. The emacs manual is GPLd, but you can still buy a dead tree version from the FSF.
So, grab what you need now and don't contribute, but no fair whining when Turbolinux bellies-up.
An alternative to contributing $$$ is go ahead and contribute some brainpower. Nobody calls Larry Wall a leach.
My father is a blogger.
Interesting how Taco editorialized with the word "yet" in the headline, as if he can see into the future and knows that they are certain to die.
---
"I feel great."
- Pete Maravitch (basketball player)
Moments before he collapsed, lost consciousness and died
...I know people who couldn't think of a single person who ran Linux until I said I do. I guess that means Linux is irrelevant?
Ya know, I can't think of a single person that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that has something to do with their problems.
Actually, from what I understand, they are very popular in the Asian markets. Just like Redhat is to the US, or SuSE to Germany/europe. And honestly, I like it that way. It fits with the "locally produced" theory of higher quality, better understanding of the end user, and local economy.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
This is so true, is that why it's a troll? Truth hurts you linux faggots?
Almost to date a year ago when I got my pink slip from US Turbolinux Inc. there were only 4-6 software engineers left, 3 people in pre-sale, 3-4 marketing, just one in tech support(!) and say 4 in QA, not counting HR, Finance, and management. So, that was 30-40 head count and also 12-15 in TurboLabs. Then there were more layoffs after I left in QA, now another "restructuring"? What would that mean? Ly-Huang Pham got laid off? That would be perhaps the most appropriate thing to do since when she became the CEO things go down and down again for them, all that happened on her watch.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
The LinuxGram article is deliberately misleading.
The first line of the Linuxgram article says, "Turbolinux, one of the four main Linux commercializers, closed down on Monday, multiple sources say." However, Maureen had already talked to Ashok Pandey and Koichi Yano thus there is no way Maurene O'Gara seriously believed that TurboLinux was closing.
"The company could not be reached for comment late last night when reports started filtering in." And yet she managed to talk to the presidents of the Asia Pacific and Japan operations.
"So has the so-called TurboLabs in New Mexico where it was supposed to be working on storage, high-availability and HPC." Cue the X-Files theme song... What did you think they were working on???
"By some reports, the company's Asian operations in Japan and China, its original base, have also been closed." Except that Maureen O'Gara already knew that these reports were false.
"Employees have reportedly not been paid for the July 1-15 period yet and the company supposedly owes a half-million dollars to its lawyers Morrison Forrester." At my last job, I worked two weeks, handed in my time card and got paid two weeks later. Perhaps it works the same way at TurboLinux. Only Maureen O'Gara would try to make the ordinary process of getting paid every two weeks a sign that Linux business was not viable.
The rest of the article is the same blend of biased half truths with a misleading spin.
I do not know why LinuxGram prints this kind of crap all day long. Their other stories are exactly the same. It's all misleading, and I can't think of any motive for it.
I do hope they go out of business soon. To paraphrase CmdrTaco, "I can't think of a single person who reads LinuxGram." I can't imagine how they stay in business as it is. Perhaps they have some other source of income.
*** mod parent up!!!!! *****
What?! I have a very difficult time believing that people who devote their weekends to slashdot could have anything less than a well rounded sense of humor.
And TurboLinux Asia Pacific will be soon.
TurboLinux US may be shutting down, or it may be downsizing in the same way that Suse did last year.
In my view, the real lesson to be learned is that you should not believe things you read on disreputable web sites.
Turbolinux Not Dead Yet
Of course not. That won't happen until tomorrow, silly.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
People wonder about why TurboLinux is still around when they know nobody who uses it. The reason it's still around is because it has one killer feature: Japanese support. It is the only distro with good Japanese support. Other distros have a hodgepodge of Japanese implemented but they are nowhere near as thorough (sure Japanese might work in the installer, but will it work in your shell? Will your file manager let you easily see Japanese filenames? etc.)
:-)
In addition it also supports other East Asian languages better than any other distro but Japanese is the most important since Japan has the best track record for actually paying money for software.
You see, supporting languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. is not just a matter of translating the text in your application. The big problem is actually supporting the multibyte text format itself in every display. Most applications expect text to be one byte per character, and they format text that way and always render as ASCII. You can patch the graphical text rendering functions to render Japanese automatically but if the application still assumes that the text area is a certain size it will look fucked up. Not only that, but Linux uses a real hodgepodge of display mechanisms so you have to frantically patch to get them all.
TurboLinux is still behind Japanese Windows and Japanese MacOS in terms of ability to use Japanese/Chinese/Korean text anywhere you can use Roman text. This has really hurt the acceptance of Linux in East Asia.... but TurboLinux is getting better at least.
So far no other distro has come anywhere near as close as Turbo in support. If Turbo dies then Linux in East Asia will suffer a major blow from which it may not recover. (Red Flag Linux might survive, but RFL *STILL* not as good in terms of Chinese-language support as Turbo).
If you want to find a user of Turbo in the U.S. to see, look for someone who speaks Japanese.
Since the beginning of the last year, when Ly Huong Pham took over as the CEO at Turbolinux Inc., there's nothing but problems for that company. Some of the problems were created before she became the head, but on the other hand whatever was left was mismanaged, in my opinion. She didn't react fast enough to the changing reality of the broader global market while let the Asia-Pacific operations in China, Korea and Japon to create their own independent business entities. Therefore, when the US division in Brisbane, CA, became short of cash there was no way to rescue it by reallocating assets from Asia. As it turned out it was the Asian divisions that had better cash flow than the US' Turbo. But she herself created this situation in the first place. When she went to Korea and talked to Samsung's managers everyone admired her intelligence. But that meant really nothing business wise. It was a PR on-the-road show.
The other point is that in the latest disclaimer by the Turbo's CEO on Linuxtoday.com, she was "...blaming the reorganization on the withdrawal of a still unidentified investor from a round of funding." What kind of round finding?, they already had III rounds of funding of which nothing is left. Now, when someone pulls out from the next round of funding and that means the new round of layoffs (called "reorganization") what does that say about the company's health? It means they're so strapped for cash that even one investor means making it or else. It's a dire straits situation. So, let Ly Huong Pham better stop deluding other people that Turbolinux Inc. in the US can survive, I wouldn't mind if she stepped down altogether, because there's no basis to show that her reign will do any good.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
shut up bitch
I know for a fact that Sherwin-Williams uses Turbolinux as the OS of every retail store cashier, as well as internally.
Probably because you're still labouring under th e impression that there's no such thing as 'Asia'.
Idiot.
Use FreeBSD and shut the fuck up.
Big in Japan...
Tonight
Big in Japan
Netcraft confirmed it...
You know how the rest goes.
Wasn't turbo linux popular with otaku who rigged up cheap clusters? Kinda reminds me of the line in monty python (and the holy grail) your dead! I got bettah. (yes i know its not an exact quote)
What % of profits Turbolinux Japan can retain or must return to their headquarters' spending vortex will make or break them regardless of performance.
PSINet Japan also was very profitable at 250 employees. Didn't prevent them from getting sucked under water and die. The funeral list is long.
Animah
The Goelette Project
http://www.nomad-mail.com
Once again Linuxgram is more interested in being first than right. They're new motto; "So much FUD, so little time." It would seem to me that a publication dependant on the success of Linux would be more interested in getting their facts straight before hanging those trying to make Linux a comercial success.
According to the latest article in a major computer magazine in Japan, "Nikkei Computer", most of the enterprise users moved from well supported Turbolinux to poorly supported RedHat or Miracle Linux, a RedHat compatible OS of Oracle Japan's subsidiary. They had a good chance to become one of the major global distributors or to remain as the major player in Asia at least, but not so sure now.
Rob Malda is not fair to Turbo Linux in his post when he wrote "Ya know, I can't think of a single person that I know that runs Turbolinux. Maybe that has something to do with their problems". Turbo Linux is an ASIAN oriented distribution, and they are doing quite well there. They are considered by distrowatch.com one of the "major" distributions.
Conectiva, the brazilian company in United Linux, might not be known by north american geeks, but is widely used in Brazil and South America. In some aspects their product is inferior to Red Hat, SuSE or Mandrake, but they also make some cool stuff. For instance, Conectiva ported apt-get to work with RPMs, and the "patch-man" of the 2.4 kernel is an employee of the company, Marcelo Tosati.
It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD (and TurboLinux) is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD (and TurboLinux) community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD (and TurboLinux) accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD (and TurboLinux) has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD (and TurboLinux) is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. TurboLinux was not even rated.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD (and TurboLinux)'s future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD (and TurboLinux) faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD (and TurboLinux) because *BSD (and TurboLinux) is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD (and TurboLinux). As many of us are already aware, *BSD (and TurboLinux) continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. Yet, TurboLinux doesn't even come close to the success of FreeBSD.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD (and TurboLinux) market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts. CmdrTaco doesn't know one person that uses TurboLinux nor does have the skills to admin FreeBSD.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD (and TurboLinux) has steadily declined in market share. *BSD (and TurboLinux) is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD (and TurboLinux) is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD (and TurboLinux) continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD (and TurboLinux) is dead.
so LinuxGram's horrible reporting can't hurt the stock price.
The point is that you can run a Linux business and be profitable.
I really hope that TurboLinux will do well. But if they don't then someone will replace them since the idea is valid and is already making money in Japan.
Tried RedHat 4.2
Learned FreeBSD 2.2.2
Picked up Turbolinux 3.0.1 and learned about all of those screwed up etc directories by watching the turbo config programs. TL was good back then. I have tried the distro every version since until 6 when you coulden't find the iso's anymore. Now if I want to run linux it is CRUX baby!
You know, I didn't think of this as a troll when I wrote it. It's true. The ego that CmdrTaco displayed there was horrendous. I think the problems that TurboLinux is experiencing may have more to do with a faulty business model than upper management not knowing CmdrTaco.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Linux community when recently MSNBC confirmed that Linux accounts for less than a fraction of 27 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. TurboLinux Linux is the most endangered of them all, having lost $4.8 billion last quarter. The constant and unpleasant conflict between long time Linux advocates Linus Tordvalds and Richard Stallman only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any question doubt: TurboLinux Linuxis continuing its slow downward spiral into darkness.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Debian leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Debian. How many users of Slackware are there? Let's see. The number of Debian versus Slackware posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Slackware users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Slackware posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put TurboLinux at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 TurboLinux users. This is consistent with the number of TurboLinux Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of SCO, abysmal sales and so on, OpenServer went out of business and was taken over by Caldera who sell another troubled OS. Now Caldera is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
Fact: Linux is dead
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Small distro, runs fast, doesn't install 100's of megs of useless stuff. I can get a TL6.0 server up and running before most RedHat/Suse installs are done.
Plus, I get the benefits of naming my servers things like "turbo-dhcp", "turbo-web", and "turbo-mail"
It's a pretty good distribution. It's probably the most underated of the larger ones. I was getting the CD's free when I'd buy LinkSys products. It might have a spot with me since it was the first I ever used.