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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?
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'm not quite dead yet.." :-)
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.
Oy! I use turbolinux. Because of constraints with budget, and because I inherited them, I run a turbolinux web cluster. It runs very well. It's really useful, as if a server goes down, I only have bad pages for 10 secods. It's a pain to set up, but it's all I have, dangit.
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
I'd never heard of TurboLinux until I bought a Linksys switch a couple of years ago. Also got another copy with my Linksys PCMCIA ethernet adaptor.
Never installed it, but I did browse the CD. Looked very much like RedHat 6.x to me, so I never bothered with it...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
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.
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?
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...
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
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
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
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
I think it was more in reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.. "I'm not dead yet.. I'm feeling better.. I think I'll go for a walk. I feel happy! I feel hap**Oof!"
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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.
I tried TurboLinux and the one thing that sticks in my memory was one of the help texts in the install, which talked about a certain library being "Required for your Redhat system." Not only had they blatantly ripped RH's package descriptions, but they didn't even bother to change the name to their own. That, and the tools were mediocre... turbolinuxcfg, etc.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra