Turbolinux Sells Linux Business

bachoom writes "Today, NIKKEI(Japanese story) announced that Turbolinux Inc. sold worldwide Linux business to SRA, Japanese SI company. Turbolinux has burned through at least $100 million raised across three rounds from a dazzling collection of companies including Intel, IBM, and many Japanese companies. Currently, They were sold by $1 million."

Comments

$1 million linux?

[lawngnome]

what did someone forget to download it off an ftp site?

How do you sell...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you sell something that is free?

I saw Commando Taco on Screen Savers!

He isn't a dork, you people are all wrong about him!

Waste you mod points on me! I need the attention!

Re:How do you sell...

[Tomah4wk]

You sell the business - the employees, the sales channels, the contacts. The buying company gets to continue the business with minimum fuss, and can bring the changes they want slowly. When you buy a business your not buying just a product, you get an established company with existing distribution and sales channels, an exisiting product base, and most importantly, an exisiting customer base.

Re:How do you sell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you mean like the dot-coms who didn't sell their content (or products) but employees and sales channels?

I can't beleive I'm reading this now after the last couple of years, where have you been hiding? And who exactly mods this unrealistic crap up?

All you people who still hasn't got that if you spend enourmous time (=money for salaries) to make something I have this to say: WAKE UP FOR CHRIST SAKE!

Didn't you notice the dot-com crash? BUY A TV DAMN IT!

What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Rares Marian]

I use $0 to develop software, and $200+ once to be able to burn the cds it goes on?

Maybe the companies selling Linux shouldn't be spending their money building but packaging it.

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Anonymous Coward]

People have these things called "salaries".
It takes money to get people to do something as a full-time job.

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Rares Marian]

Well, then that's why they lost money. They
cannibalized the company. That's the wrong way to do business.
If it weren't for Carly Fiorina's expertise in the Renaissance to recognize an opening in the tech market, I'd say HP-Compaq were dead. HP makes electronics. Compaq makes computers. HP-Compaq makes computers out of the electronics. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It's harder to sell a Mack truck than it is to sell a tire and harder to sell a PC than to sell a pair of speakers or a printer (even a cartridge at that).

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Rares Marian]

Exactly. Bad business model. In the words of Our Savior, "Why doth thou marvel?"

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heard of salaries?

You know those green things that people use for paying the bills (?)

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[erat]

Didn't you get the memo? Salaries are only allowed for the people who USE Linux. The people who produce Linux distributions are all supposed to do it full time, free of charge, without salaries. Ditto for the tech support they offer.
[sarcasm mode off]

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for Carly Fiorina's expertise

You are the first human being I have ever met who has spoken of her in a positive light.

Mind you, she has managed to both destroy the electronics dept of HP (meters, calculators, etc.) and the computing part of Compaq (ex-Digital), so I'm not sure where your argument is coming from.

I am minutes away from having a complete grasp of Godel's first incompleteness theorem, and I've just seen two turtle doves in the garden, so forgive me if I've completely misunderstood your post, I might have just begun hallucinating...

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the words of Our Savior, "Why doth thou marvel?

Remind me... was this just before he said "parteth thine cheeks, o son, for I must go unto thee with mine rod"?

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Chad Page]

Some of HP's electronics dept got spun off into Agilent, but the calc division got f*cked.

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Rares Marian]

Wait so you mean she did something like OSDN folding themes.org into freshmeat.net?

I had hopes considering the way she talked about opportunities. Where can I get this info on her evil deeds? /. doesn't seem to be covering those stories.

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Rares Marian]

Wait so you mean she did something like OSDN folding themes.org into freshmeat.net?

I had hopes considering the way she talked about opportunities. Where can I get this info on her evil deeds? /. doesn't seem to be covering those stories.

Re:What did they spend 100 Million on?

[Chad Page]

Yeah, look at Agilent, they have most of HP's hard-core stuff. Carly did the same to Lucent with Agere.

Check out theinquier.net... Mike Magee posts war stories on occasion. Sometimes the rumors are off but other times dead-on (like the story last week about the 2400/2600+ Athlons, and unfortunatly the Alpha-to-Intel story.)

IMO Mike Capellas ruined Compaq desktops by (a) throwing Alpha to the wind^W^WIntel and (b) doing the whole HP merger in the first place. Oh, and (c) not getting rid of the Presario line, which thinking about it *should* have been sold to HP... ;)

That said Carly hasn't ruined HP's real core profitable biz these days... ink.

This is why you can't pay people to write a freeOS

[maukdaddy]

and exactly why Linux will fail.

I used and liked TurboLinux

[qurob]

I still use it....

Small and fast install....

I guess it's back to RedHat (going to lose the fast install and low footprint)

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[Rares Marian]

Just use SRA Linux when it comes out.

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[fdisk3hs]

Duh, the poster didn't say it's dead, it just got sold to another company...

I would have thought they were worth more than $1 mill though...

Esp. with them being in bed with IBM so much that they have built different versions of their server distro for different IBM server platforms...

Time to Babel that article...

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[koh]

Try Gentoo linux, you won't regret it : http://www.gentoo.org/

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[Wee]

I guess it's back to RedHat (going to lose the fast install and low footprint)

You ever bother choosing "Custom Install" in Red Hat? You can get as small a footprint as you want. As for fast install, that's completely useless for me, although your situation may be different. How often do you install? It's about once a year for me and I don't mind taking to the time to look through what's new when I do install. And you even get a kickstart file made automatically for you as a bonus. Makes installing on more than one box very quick.

Using Red Hat will also give you something to bitch about, too, so there's an up side....

-B

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[rppp01]

I agree here. I prefer the opportunity to browse through the software and pick and choose what I want. I only wish Windows offered this level of choice. But to be fair, I spend a bit of time when I install MS Office on my systems as well. This allows me to choose what I want (or in the case of the paperclip guy- not want). Install time is not an issue for me here. I'd rather get it right on install, then spend the hours afterwords downloading or installing from CD all those apps that (in linux) I had the option to install during the initial install.

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[pboulang]

Just use SRA Linux when it comes out.

You know, I saw SRA and my mind melded NSA and NRA. This of course brings a host of jokes to mind:

The bullet-proof Linux

New gun-toting "hick" Linux with new rot-13 crypto

The linux of a new militia, runs Apache, Camanche, kill || die

sigh, all this flashed through my head.. must stop drinking coffee. . .

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[rootslash]

I use slackware... I know how to install software seperately... I'm very special.

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[flyingace]

It isnt dead. It might as well be. I used to work for them and have friends there. The packages there there havent been updated AFAIK in a long time. Try something like Mandrake( it rocks! ) with a proactive package update system in place. TL hasnt done security updates in a long time. I hope the geeks from Japan start doing that again..

Re:I used and liked TurboLinux

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Gentoo had a GUI installer so us masses could use it, I can get through the command line, but I am too afraid of killing my windows partition.

At least they sold for more than Debian is worth

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, at least they got $1 million for their troubles. You wouldn't get that for Debian.

come on

[Hobophile]

"They were sold by $1 million."

I understand that references to large amounts of money probably give the editors here a panicked moment as they realize just how close to broke VA Whatever and company are, but that's really no excuse for such lousy editing.

Though I admit I haven't read the story yet, and it may well have transpired that Turbolinux was sold BY a pile of cash. It does seem unlikely, however.

Re:come on

[Anonymous Coward]

100 million -> 1 million

Like LNUX going from $320/share to $0.67 a share.

Re:come on

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously trying to suggest that the Slashdot Editors should edit Slashdot ?

I am afraid that would require a level of proficiency in English that they clearly do not possess and the use of tools such as a Spell Checker that they clearly cannot afford.

Thinks I: You would beter be getting use'd to it.

Sold their linux business?

[Spudley]

Turbolinux Sells Linux Business

So does that mean they only sell turbos now?

Re:Sold their linux business?

[Uruk]

Yeah, and after spending $50 million on that business, it looks like they'll sell for $2 million!

That's a 200% increase in price/investment ratio!

Re:Sold their linux business?

[two-bookoo!]

Well with all the hondas... they might just be able to make it selling turbos....

Re:Sold their linux business?

[SEWilco]

Turbolinux announced today a $100 million contest for a new company name...

Re:Sold their linux business?

[imperator_mundi]

2/50 = 4 * 1 /100

so it is a 400% increase ; )

They're just three iteration far from reaking heaven ...

Re:Sold their linux business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the man some slack, it was probably a tyop.

What did they spend 100 Million on?

[qurob]

Marketing, web site, programmers, company logo t-shirts, office supplies, COMPUTERS...

UnitedLinux

[moonboy]

Hmmmm...this should really help UnitedLinux. First Mandrake drops out, now TurboLinux is sold off. What next?

Re:UnitedLinux

[RevAaron]

I doubt that this will really help UnitedLinux, because no one in the states really uses TurboLinux.

Re:UnitedLinux

[reaper20]

I don't think Mandrake dropped out, I think they never intented to join.

Re:UnitedLinux

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that this will really help UnitedLinux, because no one in the states really uses TurboLinux.

Might I suggest the good Reverend brushes up on his sarcasm recognition skills...?

Re:UnitedLinux

[jcoy42]

First Mandrake drops out, now TurboLinux is sold off. What next?

Profit!

Re:UnitedLinux

[erat]

As others have mentioned, Mandrake didn't drop out of UL. They never joined in the first place.

As for UL, the selling of Turbo's Linux business shouldn't mean anything. UL isn't TurboLinux; it's the combined effort of multiple different companies to produce a shared Linux base. I don't see any reason TurboLinux couldn't still participate in the UL effort. Just because a company does not sell a Linux distribution engineered in-house doesn't mean they can't participate in UL.

Re:UnitedLinux

[RevAaron]

Yarrrrrrr!

Except people use Mandrake! but not me! NO WAY NO HOW!

Re:UnitedLinux

[the grace of R'hllor]

Question:

Hmmmm...this should really help UnitedLinux. First Mandrake drops out, now TurboLinux is sold off. What next?

Answer:

Next UnitedLinux folds.

There is bound to be a reason why these companies are failing.

TurboLinux TurboSucks

[xchino]

I hate TurboLinux. It's the kind of distro that gives Linux a bad name when some Windows moron installs it and decides Linux sucks because TurboLinux sucks.

Re:TurboLinux TurboSucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost as bad are people like you who give Humans a bad name when some Normal moron talks to you and decides that people suck because you suck.

sheesh....editors?

[Raleel]

Good morning. Reread that submission. Talk it out. It doesn't have correct grammar.

Re:sheesh....editors?

[jonadab]

> Reread that submission.

How about rewriting it? I normally don't like to complain heavily
about grammar in online forums, since the author may not be writing
his first language, but when the grammar gets bad enough that I
have substantial difficulty deciphering what was meant... Can
someone please explain it to me in plain English? What business
did TurboLinux sell? The whole company, or just a subset?

Re:sheesh....editors?

[jcoy42]

Good morning. Reread that submission. Talk it out. It doesn't have correct grammar.

Speaking as someone who is still waiting for that first cup of coffee, it looks just fine. :)

Come on, it's *slashdot* and it's *early* (at least here). If you want good grammer, I think you're at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Re:sheesh....editors?

[Otter]

Honestly -- this is probably a symptom of having read Slashdot way too much for way too long but it didn't even strike me as particularly off.

It certainly didn't grate on me the way "now owned by Apple and endorced into MacOSX", from the helpfully titled Adam Fedor of GNUstep Says Stuff, did.

Re:sheesh....editors?

[ruzel]

They must have run a Japanese headline through the Babelfish. It's rare you find better Japlish than "Currently, They were sold by $1million."
_________________

Re:sheesh....editors?

[sn00perz]

Actually its called Engrish, for more crazy cool japaneese english try check out this site

LINUX Magizines in Japan

[kryonD]

If I were just to judge off their LINUX Mags over here I would say turbolinux just got hooked up. An average issue weighs in at nearly 180 pages. That's 50% larger than this month's Journal not to mention the extra density of text in the Japanese Language. ...

Turbolinux article?

[JazerWonkie]

I couldn't find an article about Turbolinux, but on the same new site there is an article about migrating to ipv6. It is pretty cool

BabelFish Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

http://babelfish.altavista.com

Babel Fish Translation, In English: SYSTRAN - Internet translation technologies
The SRA purchases the As for system development major SRA August 20th of 2002, Linux distributor major (head office: The Tokyo Shibuya Ku) it purchased. As for the same company stock of 100% acquisition. The American Turbolinux to the SRA becomes the shape which transfers the Japanese corporate body. Furthermore, the continues as a corporate body. The SRA is known in open source technology as the system development company which such as Linux is strong. On one hand, the in the country had high share as the Linux distributor which is born in fact in Japan. But, after " the Linux bubble " collapsing the saw densely 1 - 2 years had confusion such as staff reduction and alternation of the management. (Military affairs section Kenichi) * Web sight http: of related information * SRA Web sight http: of //www.sra.co.jp/ * //www.turbolinux.co.jp/ BizTech compilation As for spacer printout this spacer spacer Spacer spacer The spacer - " could eradicate management insecurity " with the subsidiary company conversion of the ---SRA the spacer - the MS Office almost " interchangeable " office product " StarSuite " the domestic sale spacer - as for president alternation and part reporting of the American withdrawal the negative spacer - " as for NISSAN complete recovery, as for the next is sale offensive posture ", the president spacer - 4 corporations such as caldera, being joint, the spacer - you do not look at " the UnitedLinux " to development and the information industrial spacer which is expected to the influence of system obstacle of the - as for uni- clo next president something occurs in the ball mound person and favorite Sawada and are high these links of the spacer spacer with the Autonomy automatic operation formation It has done. The spacer - the news of BizTech mail new register campaign - with the BizTech, you prepare the mail service which being free in morning and evening of week day, reports up-to-date news. When now, you register, luxurious prize such as espresso * manufacturer hits with pulling out selection. The deadline is September 30th. As for application, clicking this way, please register mail subscription. Spacer Spacer IT: IT-PRO medical care: MedWave investigation: Web Res PC: WPC ARENA construction: Ken Platz small-to-medium-sized: SmallBiz electron: NE ON line recruiting: Expert spacer

July 21st Slashdot Article

[Anonymous Coward]

TurboLinux is dying

Wait - I thought they were just restructuring!

What was TurboLinux?

[mbourgon]

I remember it mentioned once or twice, but it had about zero mindshare for me.

Here's my thoughts on the different distros. YMWV:
Mandrake - easy to run version of Red Hat
Red Hat - standard distro, supposed to be really cool but I can never get to work right
SuSE - YAST2 is cool
Debian - bitch to install, cake to keep up; apt-get
Slackware - some sort of hard core linux
Turbolinux - *shrug*

What was TurboLinux known for?

Re:What was TurboLinux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake - Linux for Windows users
Red Hat - Linux for American businesses
SuSE - Linux for Germany
Debian - Linux for nerds
Slackware - Linux for *old* nerds
Turbolinux - Linux for Japan?

Re:What was TurboLinux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake = Red Hat that works.
Red Hat = Linux (yeah right) that doesn't work, and is put together in a manner that makes no sense. But they put lots of $$$ into projects, so they do something right.
SuSE = Closed OS build upon an open platform.
Debian = Old, outdated, but easy to make current.
Slackware = The most UNIX-like of Linux distributions (That's a good thing for many of us).
Turbolinux = Well known for Asian language support. Made significant contributions.

Re:What was TurboLinux?

[jimbobborg]

They did two things. Optimized the kernel for the processors out of the box, and clustered web servers. The web server thing was their big seller, as it let you cluster web servers running any OS's, like one Linux, one Solaris, one Windows. Pretty cool technology, but they weren't a big seller here in the US.

Re:What was TurboLinux?

[erat]

Others have mentioned Asian language support and clustering. To that list I'll add this: the first functional (albeit ugly) IA64 Linux distro. As much as other Linux companies would deny it, I'm going to guess that every one of them that has an IA64 implementation has "borrowed" a few things from Turbo's IA64 offering. At least the early versions of the distros had LOTS of RPMs with "[Tt]urbo[Ll]inux" somewhere in the headers (for all I know, many still do).

Wait...

[Rayonic]

So they spent about $100 million in investor money, and now they're being sold for $1 million. In today's economy, doesn't that mean they turned a net profit?

Re:Wait...

[cyber_rigger]

So they spent about $100 million in investor money,
and now they're being sold for $1 million.
In today's economy, doesn't that mean they turned a net profit?

That would depend on how good their accounting firm is.

:^)

Fantastic...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...$100 million raised ... were sold by $1 million..."

Thats what I would call...bad...

Then will this insanity end?

New business-model?

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Raise $100 million to sell free stuff.
2: ?
3: Sell for $1 million.
4: Profit!

Hmmm...wait a minute! There is something wrong with the picture here.

Re:New business-model?

[biglig2]

Ha, there's something wrong with your bsiness model when:
1. Do stuff
2. ?
3. Profit!

obviously doesn't work. ;-)

Re:New business-model?

[RuinStorm]

This formla, like many dotcom's is just the "UnderPants Gnomes" Business Model in action!

I'm suprised it took this long

[richj]

I can't really say I'm suprised that they pissed away 100 million in venture capital. Their sales guys seemed to having an adverse reaction to SELLING.

I met with TurboLinux at LinuxWorld 1999 in NYC, this was during the big Linux boon. I was working as an independant consultant, and I had a Fortune 500 client looking to pilot Linux on file and print servers.

The TurboLinux salesguys were flat out fucking rude to me when I told him that I was evaluating different distros to present in my solution. "Oh that's great, just download it and go and install it, what's the big deal?" or some shit he said to me. Idiot had absolutely no idea how business works, if I brought him into my client we both would have been out the door.

Anyway, I wound up running with RedHat (a distro that my client paid for on all systems). I'm not saying that my client expected World Series tickets for a few grand in licensing, but when you have people like that working the booth at a tradeshow it's not the type of people you'd bring into a large and established New York City company.

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like you had no idea how Linux works. Just download it and go and install it, what IS the big deal? Did you need your hand held?

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[fdisk3hs]

He wanted the booth guy to blow in his nappy ear because of his big 'client'. Toot your own horn cheese head.

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot had absolutely no idea how business works, if I brought him into my client we both would have been out the door. Anyway, I wound up running with RedHat

So the moral of the story is "nobody gets fired for buying Redhat"?

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[richj]

Looks like you had no idea how Linux works. Just download it and go and install it, what IS the big deal? Did you need your hand held?

This works around the apartment or on a friend's PC. But, for a second do you actually think that someone in charge of a network infrastructure is going to gamble his reputation on a consultant with a few burned CDs and no support?

What if the pilot was a disaster and he had nobody to call? The client would have been back to the "Windows 2000 Migration Plan" quicker than it would have taken you to feel the foot across your ass as you hit the street.

Your mentality is why companies are afraid to migrate to an Open Source system, you have no concept of assurance.

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have Big City Syndrome - anyone who lives or has lived in a big city, but was born in a small town, will mention the big city in which they live/lived at least once in every conversation.

So, which hick burg do you hail from?

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what he was trying to say was that you're one of the typical cheesheads that say "oh i have this big client that wants to do this, give me free stuff".

Its independent consultants like you that give everyone else a bad name.

duh!

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[richj]

I think what he was trying to say was that you're one of the typical cheesheads that say "oh i have this big client that wants to do this, give me free stuff".

You're killing me with this. Yeah, TurboLinux gives out all kinds of free stuff, I told the clowns at TurboLinux that if I didn't get a stuffed Tux beanbag for my desk that I was going to take my business elsewhere.

I'm not sure if you got the crux of my argument, but I was looking to have them talk with the company I was working for so they could decide what distro they were most comfortable with. All I wanted was a conference call, if they could have given me an actual salesguy to do a sales call I would have been absolutely thrilled.

Its independent consultants like you that give everyone else a bad name.

I left a full-time job at the client for a security engineering position at a telco. I wanted to finish the project I was on and not strand the company I left, because:

1. They were thinking about Linux as a file/print server
2. They were going to go with W2K if Linux didn't work
3. I was the biggest Linux advocate in the IT dept and I had the best chance of convincing the political "powers" that Linux was the best choice.

It was a great way to get Linux in the door at a big company and make a few dollars on the side. But I'm far from an independant contractor.

What it all boils down to is I spoke with TurboLinux and asked if they wanted to be part of the pilot, and the sales guy told me to "just download it and install it".

What's your tactic for getting Linux in the door, just going out and reinstalling everything?

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[llywrch]

> This works around the apartment or on a friend's PC. But, for a second do you actually think that someone in charge of
> a network infrastructure is going to gamble his reputation on a consultant with a few burned CDs and no support?
>
> What if the pilot was a disaster and he had nobody to call? The client would have been back to the "Windows 2000
> Migration Plan" quicker than it would have taken you to feel the foot across your ass as you hit the street.

Following this entire thread, richj's comments describe a situation where he walked up to some salesdroids, handed them a hot lead that would make the day ofany salesdroid from MS or Oracle, & they told him to FOAD.

Granted, I don't know if richj was dressed in a suit & tie, or forgot to bathe that week & wore tattered jeans & a ``Fuck Gates" t-shirt. But I doubt it was the latter.

If a company can't go thru the trouble of putting on a dog-&-pony show for a client, tell them the usual stories about how their product is a dessert topping & a floor wax, will eat their dog if they want it eaten, they deserve to go out of business.

Geoff

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[tmark]

If a company can't go thru the trouble of putting on a dog-&-pony show for a client, tell them the usual stories about how ...[they] will eat their dog if they want it eaten, they deserve to go out of business.

Dude, maybe the TurboLinux guys won't eat the customer's dog, but TurboLinux is a Japanese distro. If the customer wants its dog eaten, they have to go to a Korean distro. The most TurboLinux will do is eat used ladies undies from one of those (in)famous Japanese vending machines.

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[Anonymous Coward]

Now wait a minute, I live in Japan, did some part-time work for TurboLinux in the late 1990s, and have known a bunch of TL staff, including the founders of the company, and never, even once, did I see any of them eating used panties - or even new ones - out of a vending machine or otherwise :-)

Come to think of it, I haven't seen an underwear vending machine in years. There used to be one in my neighborhood, right around the corner from the drink machines, but I think it only sold new underwear. Then again, the prices written on it were ridiculous. Maybe not. I guess it either didn't sell well or too many people complained, because one day it was gone. The thing was always really dusty looking, I don't think it got much attention. The window had some kind of mylar film on it so you could only see inside at night when the light was on.

Now that it's gone, I wish I'd photographed it for posterity. Or posteriors. Or something :-)

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[richj]

You seem to have Big City Syndrome - anyone who lives or has lived in a big city, but was born in a small town, will mention the big city in which they live/lived at least once in every conversation.

So, which hick burg do you hail from?

Hmm, well I either lived in NYC, or less than 5 miles from it my whole life. With the exception of 4 years in the USMC, that is. If that makes me a hick....

You normally this xenophobic?

1 million dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

geesh and I thought Linux was supposed to cut down expenses... ?

Don't talk shit

[Anonymous Coward]

The place is called Subway for a reason. It isn't called Hoagieway now, is it?

obligatory

[kin_korn_karn]

TL1: What happen?
TL2: Somebody set up us the merger.
TL3: We get signal
SRA: How are you gentlemen?
SRA: All your rinux are belong to us
TL1: what you say !!

Re:obligatory

[Ilgaz]

For once, ROTFL especially for rinux part! :)

Anyone doesn't know where that "rinux" comes, check http://www.engrish.com ;-)

Re:obligatory

[suffocate]

you are the most unfunny motherfucker on the face of the planet. I modded you down for being a drooling and syphillic donkey molester, but I decided to post and mock you instead.

I dont' expect comedy incarnate on slashdot, but jesus fucking christ: zerowing humor? Still?

I hope you get hit by a bus on your way home today.

Re:obligatory

[kin_korn_karn]

thank you. since we know that hoping

at any rate, I made a bunch of people waste their mod points on a useless post.

Re:obligatory

[emmons]

Don't forget that his moderation of that post was taken away when he posted to the story himself. Idiot.

Step 2 is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

2: Funnel $99 million into offshore bank accounts

Its the ultimate Linux business plan!

Not surprising

[Launch]

I mean they were sold by $1 million... I wonder what the other $99 million are doing... prolly looking for new jobs ever since that dick head $1 million sold them all.

So Long TurboLinux

[christurkel]

So Long TurboLinux, and thanks for all the sushi!

Masters of comedy presents

[stud9920]

TL1: What happen?
TL2: Somebody set up us the merger.
TL3: We get signal
SRA: How are you gentlemen?
SRA: All your rinux are belong to us
TL1: what you say !!

You are a true comedy genius ! What do you think of this one ?

step 1: put $ 100m into software distributed for free
step 2:?????????
setp 3: PROFIT !!!!

I can't believe you and I are so funny...

Re:Masters of comedy presents

[kin_korn_karn]

Ever seen Ishtar? I think we've got a winning road act here.

we're off on the road to Sheboygan
we'll dine on the sand which is there

TurboLinux execs figured it out!!

[Havokmon]

Step 1: Create Linux Distro

Step 2: ????

Step 3: Profit

Title

[yatest5]

1. Start Company

2. Spent $100 million

3. Profit?

Re:Title

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Don't read other posts

2. Rehash old joke for the 89Million'th time

3. Fail to be funny

I hope you all apreciate the irony inherent in this post.

Re:Title

[yatest5]

I hope you all apreciate the irony inherent in this post.

Me too - since you didn't appreciate the irony in mine.

Turbolinux was known for two things...

[emil]

1. Asian language support.
2. High-availability clustering.

I don't know much about their clustering software, but I doubt that it was of the caliber of any commercial offerings of the old-school UNIX players.

From what I understand, Compaq Tru64 UNIX (formerly known as Digital UNIX, formerly known as Digital OSF/1) has the very best clustering capabilities in the industry. The native Tru64 filesystem, AdvFS, can be mounted by multiple UNIX systems at the same time, which eases cluster maintenance considerably. AdvFS is one of the important components of Tru64 that will be migrated to HP-UX (but this work is going very badly, from what I understand).

Supposedly, Oracle is releasing a clustering file system for Linux under the GPL, and it seems similar in capabilities to AdvFS. HP also has ported their MC/ServiceGuard software (the normal high-availability component of HP-UX) to Linux. With this kind of competetion, I can see why Turbolinux is hard-pressed in the clustering software arena.

Re:Turbolinux was known for two things...

[uncleFester]

AdvFS is one of the important components of Tru64 that will be migrated to HP-UX (but this work is going very badly, from what I understand).

I'm not suprised; AdvFS had to have a lot of hooks deep into Tru64 that probably don't (or really can't) translate over to HPUX. AdvFS is cool: I didn't get to spend a lot of time with it but loved how solid the filesystem (and the OS) performed, whether on RAID, JBOD or otherwise. Particularly, I liked AdvFS method of file domains, adding another level to partitioning. It was REAL simple to create quickie test filedomains for small storage areas without having to format/partition/whatnot.

Comparatively, 64-but HPUX is still quite infantile compared to OSF/Tru64. I think HP is making some mistakes in ASSuming they can incorporate some technologies so easily (TruCluster, AdvFS) while throwing away the rest of such a solid OS.

But that's just my unemployed $0.02...

Re:Turbolinux was known for two things...

[__aasmho4525]

just wanted to point out that one of the other things that turbo was well known for is their prowess on linux for 390 / z-series.

cheers.

Peter

Re:Turbolinux was known for two things...

[crawling_chaos]

I think HP is making some mistakes in ASSuming they can incorporate some technologies so easily (TruCluster, AdvFS) while throwing away the rest of such a solid OS.

One of the many reasons I have started to refer to HomPaq as "Unisys - The Next Generation." I figure that they'll be down to a contract service firm within the next ten years or so.

Re:Turbolinux was known for two things...

[Znork]

Actually, my experience of Tru64's TruCluster is that it violates the good old engineering principle of Keep It Simple, Stupid. And it shows. In a failure situation it hasnt been rare that the entire cluster locks up, rather than one machine crashing and the rest taking over the load.

Compared to the incredibly simplistic solution with MC/ServiceGuard, the differences in total uptime shows. ServiceGuard doesnt have near the features that TruCluster does, but it does (eventually) get the applications up and running again on another node.

Which is sortof the point of HA solutions.

Clustering filesystems are not stable yet. They may be in a few years, but for now, ignore them unless you like working weekends. I can think of very very few problems they solve well enough to be worth the screaming mindsearing _pain_ they cause. Stick with the mindbogglingly annoying solution of using NFS instead, if you have to have multiple mounts of a filesystem.

Re:Turbolinux was known for two things...

[Anonymous Coward]

ADVfs was a boat anchor for Digital. Hundreds of
engineer-years invested in a bloated piece of crap.
ADVfs consumed so much of their kernel group
resources that the rest of the kernel was allowed to rot...

Re:Turbolinux was known for two things...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Asian language support.

The main localization guy in TL K.K. left for redhat shortly after the VCs took over (this is about the time that RH's japanese support started getting a *LOT* better and they unified the source under a single tree rather than having to maintain parallel developments).

Where did the $1mill figure come from?

[fdisk3hs]

It is not in the story. Do you mean it was sold for $1mill or what? Scooped the story quick, but I'm skeptical of that figure.

LR

Re:Where did the $1mill figure come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

It came from selling off the tables, chairs and watercoolers from the office...

Hopefully people start to realize that there is no money in Linux. Corporate Linux will ALWAYS die and will NEVER make it into mainstream use.

Linux Business Plan

1. Raise $100M in VC
2. Spend it developing something that you give away for free
3. Scratch your head because you forgot to sell your product.
4. Sell off company to some other sucker for $1M
5. Retire in your beachfront property paid for by your $500,000/yr salary (thank you investors)

What this means

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

Yet another story of a Linux company in trouble or quitting altogether. Looks like the Linux revolution is taking a bit longer than originally expected ...

Re:What was TurboLinux? (whereis Gentoo?)

[uncleFester]

Google is your friend... Look at DistroWatch. I thoguht Turbo initially was a distro that would try to tailor to your arch a little better, thus perform better.. but I think they turned into another standard GUI-based Mandrake/Redhat pretty install.

You forgot Gentoo - Even more hard core than Slackware; use if you are into watching your machine stroke out in a compile-fest. emerge is your friend. It's neat to watch my spare box (Celery466) sit off to the side mired in building KDE from scratch. :)

Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Vanders]

Why is it that people must label Mandrake as some sort of "Linux for idiots" distribution? So its easy to use, so what, thats bad somehow? What, I have to installing & configure everything by hand to be a "proper" Linux user?

Look, get over it. I've been using Linux since Redhat 5.1 (Whats that, 5 years?). I've written my own dialup scripts, I've configured Xf96config by hand, I've upgraded, installed, built, re-built and hacked on Linux until my eyes bled. So please, don't try and tell me I don't know how to use Linux.

You know what, though? After doing all of that, I became sick and tired of it. All I want to do is get my work done, deal with my email and use the web 95% of the time. So I use Mandrake, which at least lets me do most of it without anoying me.

Oh, not that Mandrake is anything like perfect. Far from it, in fact. Its just the least sucky of the bunch, for me.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[john82]

Ding! I wish more people would take note of that easy to use thing. It's one of the things that keep more users from leaving Microsoft.

Well said.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[blochsound]

I agree, I used mandrake as my first install, and the fact is, if it hadn't been easy to install, I probably would have given up. I think that it is important to know how to change what you want, but if you can't get a newbie to use something because of the perceived difficulty, we won't have any adoptees of Linux, regardless of the distrobution. I am now using Red Hat 7.3 which is working, but it took a while to actually get it running. I don't think that joe q public is going to want to sit down and edit the configuration file for X. Why, because he doesn't expect that to be a condition of computing. the average user expects it to be easy and painless and fairly useful. Otherwise, he would be an IT professional, or a developer, or a Computer Science student. Mandrake and any distro that makes it easier for new people to get set up on linux is ok in my book.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[ericman31]

Joe User wants to be able to treat his computer like a TV. Turn it on, send an email, browse the web for naked girls, turn it off. The reason Joe User distrusts Microsoft these days is that MS has been promising that for years, and they haven't delivered it. Instead their prices keep going up, they get taken to court as a monopoly, and their operating systems and software still leave quite a bit to be desired. Now open source has its chance. But if the hardcore "compile or die" guys impose their view of computing on it, open source will fail fairly quickly and the proprietary software world will lock in Joe User forever.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[k8to]

Why is it that people must label Mandrake as some sort of "Linux for idiots" distribution?

Because it is.

Mandrake upon a default install does not provide a valid UNIX installation. Huge sections of the POSIX shell environment are missing.

Mandrake tends to build their own tools the nice unix way, with a backend engine, and a frontend GUI. However, they forget to document the backend in any sort of reasonable way, and generally assume all users will only ever want to use the GUI. Example in the 8.0 days was the upgrading tool, which talked to a backend, which talked to urpmi. There was no documentation on this backend tool in any part of the distribution, on any part of their web site, or on any developer pages I could find. When the backend was crashing for me, I had to use gdb and strace to simply FIND OUT WHAT IT WAS DOING. I then decided it might be falling down over strange return values from urpmi, and wiped out the relevant part of urpmi's database in order to get the whole thing working again. Note the top level error of the gui tool exposed to the user was: An error has occurred.

Mandrake follows the Red Hat practice of delivering alpha and beta quality software releases out of CVS trees but lacks Red Hat's technical excellence to reduce the fatal flaws. Mandrake followed Red Hat's lead with gcc "2.96" but provided a compiler which produced segfaulting executables with the most trivial code, such as a C program which simply allocated memory in a while(1) loop.

Similarly, when Red Hat included the not-yet-beta vim 6.0 with all the features turned off to make it safe (why use the new vim when you have to disable all the new features?), Mandrake pulled in vim 6.0 but left many features on, leading to the editor croaking on me at very inconvenient times.

Mandrake has _terrible_ documentation. Prior to mandrake 8.1 there were no published software flaws at all! The bug database is very sparsely populated. The manual is fluff and the online support generally focuses on trivial basics with a real lack of information on mandrake-specific tools in detail. If you write a tool for your own distribution, you need to document it. This is worse than the KDE team and KWin here.

When attempting to test the compatability of different linux distributions across a range of supplied hardware (I was working for a vendor at the time) Mandrake was unable to handle more than 1.5 GB of ram without crashing and burning. The install didn't even suggest there might be an issue, it would just fall over now and then. After spending an hour or so finding their bug database, I logged the problem, and a day or two later it was followed up with a suggestion to try the 'enterprise' kernel. That sounds great. Where is the 'enterprise' kernel? It was in no docs, in no install selection, and I couldn't find a file containing the string 'enterprise' on the CD images. Requests for further information turned up silence.

The Mandrake development team is exceedingly haphazard. They make tools where ones already exist (see package maintenance above, why not use connectiva's apt?) and have fail to understand their role in software very well. On problems specific to mandrake but even more so on 'personal' side projects run by Mandrake employees (eg. Frozen Bubble) I've received the worst kind of developer bad attitude. Examples include:

• Refusal to believe a bug happened when all necessary information to reproduce the bug is included with the bug report.
  "Cannot reproduce" I can accept, but not "I refuse to believe that happened. end of discussion"
• Declaration that because a bug does not manifest on the developer system, it does not exist.
• Insane statements that because the developer is a free software author and spends his/her time to make software for me, I should have no expectations that they look at my bug reports. Hello, I am a free software author spending my time to help make your software better, and have an expectation that they either maintain or abdicate maintenance of their software, not make strange moralistic claims about bug reports being wastes of their time.

Mandrake has come out and publically declared that there is no need for them to support Linux compatability efforst because they are already compatable (with Red Hat). Nevermind that they (as above) do a poor job of chasing Red Hat, the LSB fundamentally extends the benefits of the Linux/Free Software world by providing clarity as a software creator as to whether a binary problem lies in the application or operating system domain. Thus, it provides additional rights to the users of the system, and an ability to clearly identify and fix bugs in the vendor's provided distribution. How can you not see the benefit here?

In short, Mandrake does indeed have a pretty gui, so if that's all you care about, you could choose Mandrake, or SuSE really, or just install Ximian Gnome on whatever. But if you care about stability, or the documentation and solvability of your system, or UNIX compatability, or Linux compatability, or quality of supplied software, or software freedom.. then there's really no good reason to use Mandrake.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Vanders]

All of the flaws you highlight (Real or imagined) are an issue with the Mandrake build and test process, and are nothing to do with Mandrake being an easy to use distribution.

I certainly understand your frustrations, though. You are clearly far more comfortable with a different distribution, and fair enough, whatever makes you happy. However, that does not make me an idiot, or a clueless user, simply because I choose to use Mandrake.

I use Mandrake because it is trivial to install, supports my hardware well, and it uses KDE (Which I prefer) but does not also insist in installing Gnome (As Redhat does), which I don't want.

If I do a Custom install, I can choose to install just the servers I want (I want to run sshd, but not sendmail, wuftpd, telnetd etc. etc.) Mandrake allows me to do all of this, without being too fiddly or complicated in the process.

Just a couple more points, though:

Huge sections of the POSIX shell environment are missing.

Which sections? I have not noticed any differences between Mandrake 8.0 and Redhat. I have not seen any missing tools. Also, which POSIX standard are you refering too? My copy of POSIX Programmers Guide only shows P1003.2 (Definition of a standard command shell language) as "in progress". Admitedly, the list was compiled in 1993, but I'm not aware of any official POSIX standard that defines the shell?

a compiler which produced segfaulting executables with the most trivial code, such as a C program which simply allocated memory in a while(1) loop.

I'm not aware of these issues with gcc-2.96 (The version I have here, in Mandrake 8.0). I've tried a simple application, as you outline* and I see no segfault. Naturally, leaving a malloc(); inside of a while(1) loop will eventually cause undesirable behaviour, but you can't blame the compiler for that.

As for documentation, I have the man pages & google. Not to mention, I've done most of it plenty of times before :)

* The example:

[foo@bar foo]$ cat test.c
#include <malloc.h>

int main(void);

int main(void)
{
while(1){
(void*)malloc(1);
}
}

[foo@bar foo]$ gcc --version
2.96
[foo@bar foo]$ gcc test.c -o test
[foo@bar foo]$ ./test

[foo@bar foo]$

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just need to get this straight.

1. Mandrake is an idiot distro.

2. You have problems getting mandrake to work properly.

What precisely do you call someone too dumb to even use an idiot install?

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[EverDense]

I am not sure Joe User knows who Microsoft are, other than: "that's that Bill Gates guy. He's, like really rich, isn't he?"

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[HiThere]

Thing is, it doesn't all need to be one flavor. I, personally, dither over Mandrake. I like many parts of it, others I don't.

If I recommend a distribution to someone, it will be whatever I have installed. That way, I'll have a chance of being able to figure things out when they ask me over the phone what the problem is. If a tyro was asking which distribution to get, I'd probably say Macintosh, unless I wanted to support them.

But if someone asked me what Linux distribution to get ... I'd go with Mandrake. I'd probably say, order it already installed from WalMart, too. (Well, depends on what they needed. I might say Pogo, or some other preinstaller.)

Only if they wanted to install it themselves would I suggest that they install Mandrake. Not that it's particularly hard, but I've known users to have problems that I couldn't imagine. I just got back from a help desk call where a used complained that the printing was coming out landscape instead of portrait. Turns out she was manually feeding the paper, and feeding it in sideways.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Arandir]

Because it is.

I never used Mandrake long enough to get to this level of frustration. I left Mandrake a long time before that could happen. I suggest you do the same.

But I do agree somewhat with your basic premise. Mandrake seems to operate under the premise that "easy to use" means "no intermediate or advanced users allowed". Oh, advanced Mandrake users are fine, but if you have any knowledge of Unix, Posix or other distros, you're left outside in the cold.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Arandir]

But if the hardcore "compile or die" guys impose their view of computing on it, open source will fail fairly quickly

Who said anything about imposing our choice on you? We don't feel the need for a single unified free unix-like operating system. We don't think that only one distribution should come out on top. When we hear Linus say "world domination" we recognize that it is humor and not a goal.

I am perfectly happy with you using Mandrake just as long as you let me use Gentoo and FreeBSD.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[ericman31]

I personally don't use Mandrake, I prefer RedHat over all. This post actually wasn't in support of Mandrake but more trying to discuss what Joe User wants. Joe User doesn't give a flip what his PC runs. He does want it to work easy, like any other appliance. He will trust brand names, like he does with any other appliance. This is one area where Microsoft had an advantage. Right now there is a window of opportunity because Microsoft's brand name is working against them. My father, who has been a died in the wool supporter of MS products for years now is talking about Linux and MacOS and seriously considering them as an alternative to MS, as an example. He is a long time PC user, not an IT guy.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[k8to]

All of the flaws you highlight (Real or imagined) are an issue with the Mandrake build and test process, and are nothing to do with Mandrake being an easy to use distribution.

I didn't suggest it was hard to use. I suggested it was built with a foolish lack of concern for a great many things that matter besides ease of use. Additionally, these errors end up costing in the realm of fixing/maintaining, which some people might feel is more important to 'ease of use' than the first impressions.

However, that does not make me an idiot, or a clueless user, simply because I choose to use Mandrake.

It doesn't make you an idiot, but it does mean that the distrubution is _designed_ for the lowest common denominator. If I want to be uncharatible, idiots. This mindset of "I just want it to be easy and I don't care if it's poorly designed and unfixable" makes me wonder why Mandrake users don't go use Windows XP. It works decently you know.

Much chatter about install selections elided. Any distribution which doesn't make this simple is broken.

Huge sections of the POSIX shell environment are missing.

Which sections? I have not noticed any differences between Mandrake 8.0 and Redhat. I have not seen any missing tools. Also, which POSIX standard are you refering too? My copy of POSIX Programmers Guide only shows P1003.2 (Definition of a standard command shell language) as "in progress". Admitedly, the list was compiled in 1993, but I'm not aware of any official POSIX standard that defines the shell?

Please review POSIX 1003.2. Mandrake leaves out many of the required shell utilities by default. As a result, posix compliant shell scripts will not run on Mandrake. I don't remember the exact list. I seem to remember that shutils was simply not available. Yes. Really. NO SHUTILS.

a compiler which produced segfaulting executables with the most trivial code, such as a C program which simply allocated memory in a while(1) loop.

I'm not aware of these issues with gcc-2.96 (The version I have here, in Mandrake 8.0). I've tried a simple application, as you outline* and I see no segfault. Naturally, leaving a malloc(); inside of a while(1) loop will eventually cause undesirable behaviour, but you can't blame the compiler for that.

In the context in question, I wanted to ensure that I could allocate all the memory on the machine without it falling over. This was a controlled stress test to push the VM, ensure proper memory detection, and the memory/disk subsystems. These were real points of failure at the time (2.2.17 and so on).

I had other programs which nicelay allocated and deallocated memory willy nilly with walking ones and zeros patterns while this program would simply allocate memory until it was given an error or until it was killed by the OOM killer. It wasn't guilty of causing overcommits at all. It dutifully touched each page as it was allocated, so no problem there.

I had various problems with the various tests, but finally was able to get the allocator to die in some cases on its own, which was allocating memory in 4096 byte chunks. This was shocking to me. Copying over the red-hat compiled binary of the same error produced no errors at all.

Please note, additionally, that there is no gcc 2.96. It is a fiction. Red Hat lifted a pre-release of 2.96 from the gcc cvs tree and called it gcc 2.96. The GCC developers had no intention of anyone considering this an actual version or release, it was just the version they would have used had they finished with the release. Because of this problem, 2.96 was marked as a banned never-release version of gcc which would not see the light of day to avoid confusion with the Red Hat release.

Thus, there was no gcc-2.96, but merely a CVS snapshot with a TON of important patches. It would be more appropriate to call it gcc-2.9redhat. Mandrake's version, with less expertise was far more flawed and problemed. For all I know they released repatched versions later, but simply that they distribute 2.96 shows they are either passing along Red Hat's questionable decision or continuing to be even more misleading to their users by producing a second build of gcc which also is not gcc 2.96, but is not the same build as Red Hat's.

As for documentation, I have the man pages & google. Not to mention, I've done most of it plenty of times before :)

Man pages and Google are great. Info pages are even better (if you hate them, learn to use pinfo or the KDE info viewer, or something.

But if a distribution vendor provides a piece of software specific to their own distribution, the onus is on THEM to document it, in a man page, in an info page, in a textfile, somewhere. Mandrake has failed to provide one drop of documentation for some of their programs. The mentality is: this is a program which sits behind a gui program, no one needs to know anything about it. This way leads to madness.

Mind you, I didn't even get into the cheap shots, like the corrupting fonts in 7.2 and the blind slipstream rpm 4.x release and etc. etc. etc.

Mandrake does not comprehend the UNIX way. Those who do not understand the mistakes of the past are busy repeating them and all that.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[k8to]

Oh, and how did your program exit?

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[k8to]

Guy, I'm not some longtime bitter and frustrated user of Mandrake.

I used Mandrake for work for about 3 weeks in order to validate it on a line of hardware. I was pretty shocked that it was that bad.

94-97 Slackware. 97-2002 SuSE. 2002 Debian.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[io333]

Excuse me? How about making the subject "Let's get over Mandrake being easy to use"

You've been using linux for 5 years? I've been using *nix for 20. Mandrake is EASY TO CLEAN INSTALL, and that is it. After that it is a bloated pig of a distribution with horrible dependency issues and an alpha version software installer. In contrast, Gentoo is a pretty large PITA to install, but so much faster than Mandrake when it is done that it is rediculous, and has the easiest new software installation procedure of *any* linux distro out there, with near ZERO dependency issues.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you.

I tried Mandrake for 48 hours. By then I'd given up because it was such a stinking heap of festering shit. Or a festering heap of stinking shit. Whichever you like.

But maybe Mandrake isn't for idiots; it's not good enough for that yet.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[blochsound]

I agree. I think that there is a big window for a major coup by the open source community. I am not against the hardcore coder guys, hell, we wouldn't even have linux without them, but I still think that accessability is a key issue. I like that fact that my distro has been tweaked by me, ableit not too much, I like that fact that I have access to all this GREAT configurability. It just needs to presented in an accessible manner, and that is where my hope lies. If I can learn how to use gnu/linux, anyone can....

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Vanders]

Ah, fair enough, you raise some good points. If you're looking for a Linux which is as close to Unix as you can get it, clearly Mandrake isn't for you. Yes, some things are broken, but the bits that work far outweigh the bits that are broken. I don't have many test applications that allocate memory in 4k chunks in a while(1) loop, for example...

As for POSIX.2, fair enough. As I said, the list was last updated in 1993, so I wouldn't expect it to have still been in progress (O.K. its a standards body, but over 10 years would be a bit much). I won't be reviewing the standard just yet, though, unless I can get a copy for cheap!

sh-utils is there, by the way

rpm -q sh-utils<br>
sh-utils-2.0-13mdk

I'm well aware of what RedHat and Mandrake did with GCC, and yes I am well aware of why it isn't really 2.96, thanks though. Thats the version it reports back, though, and we both know what we're talking about when I say gcc-2.96.

Still, I'll stick with Mandrake (Why don't I use Windows XP? Because I don't like Windows XP. All I really want is an RPM based distro that ships with KDE; Mandrake has that). At least until Syllable is a little better, than I can start using something I'm far more comfortable with.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Killed by me, but it was unlikely to have triggered the same bug. You were allocated 4k at a time, on a certain kernel version. This is a newer 2.4.x kernel built from source, and I'm allocating 1b a go.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[k8to]

I have no problem with a linux which is not UNIX. Personally I'd love to see a BeOS or AmigaDos on the linux kernel. However, Mandrake goes to the trouble to provide bash and so forth, but their default install won't run a normal unix script. Oops. I consider this deceit of customers, and a burden for developers of Linux apps.

Allocation of 4k chunks was not the problem a broken compiler which could fail for trivial applications was the problem That it doesn't fail for all trivial applications is not terribly redeeming.

Mind you, I didn't suggest shutils was missing from Mandrake, but missing from the default install. "Non-Compliant by default" is right up there with "It works for me" as computer industry wrongthink. Mandrake had a nice shiny checkbox for "shell utilities" which was unchecked by default. Or maybe it was "Command line tools". Imperfect memory.

RPM based distro that ships with KDE? SuSE. You get all that as well as smart developers who know what they're doing. (Of course all distros come with KDE nowadays, but i'm assuming mean as a nicely configured default). Of course it isn't worth reinstalling, learning quirks, but it's worth it to me as a developer to resist new deployment of a system which makes my life harder.

Best wishes with syllable. Anything that explores new ground or even makes a new attempt at familiar ground which is yet to be mastered is an important endeavour in my book.

Re:Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Vanders]

Well, I agree with your point concerning "It works for me". I consider it one of the most braindead responses one can offer for an argument. However, we clearly have very different experiences regarding Mandrake. The box I was sat at when I checked for sh-utils was a custom install, granted, but I do not remember ever explictly having to tell it to install sh-utils. Obviously, something is broken with Mandrakes dependency management.

As for SuSE, well, I've tried it once or twice at various versions, and I've never really felt comfortable with it. The fact that YaST2 is non-free bothers me somewhat, and I've also had issues with hardware detctection and driver configuration when I last tried SuSE. Inertia is also an important point; I already have Mandrake installed, and I find switching to a new system a painful experience at the best of times.

Thank you for support of Syllable. Hopefully we can build a usable system, and then I can abandon Linux all together and stop having to keep track of all these slightly different distributions! :)

Errr....

[cswiii]

That is possibly the most confusing story description I've ever read on Slashdot.

And before my morning coffee, too! Bad Slashdot, bad, no Warcraft for you today!

Re:sheesh....tolerance?

[sylvester]

Have you ever noticed that the editors don't seem to edit the quoted text? I like that. I think they should take the best/first submission. Moreover, did you notice that the story was from a Japanese source? And that they "by/for" mistake is one easily made by someone who (probably) speaks more languages than you do? Did you have any trouble at all understanding the story? Would you prefer slashdot stories take another 8 hours to hit, so they can be vetted by an editor? Slashdot is ad hoc (both in the literal and colloquial sense of ad hoc...) news. If you want cleanly editted news, read ZDNet. Notice how they don't have as much variety or community?

Just wondering.

-Rob

Clarifications; did SRA spend their $mil well?

[sam_handelman]

I'd like to thank Bachoom (the author of the little blurb) for all his excellent work in writing car manuals and stero instructions (Do not to the measurement! There will be a great occurence!) I say this to all my Japanese friends - use the grammer checker, dude.

Babelfish translation of the story itself (his link) is pretty incomprehensible - don't bother, but let me clarify: SRA bought the entire company, 100% of the stock. SRA will continue to operate in an independent fashion, however, at least for a while (I think).

Does Turbolinux have any debts, or was all the venture capital stock purchases?

We can all agree that TurboLinux inc. was a financial failure of epic proportions (distro was good, I think). The question is - did SRA make a good buy for their $1 million dollars? I don't know much about SRA, but they seem to provide Linux-based consultancy in Japan, where Turbolinux is a very popular distro. If their core consultancy (and training? I can barely read japanese - the corporate babble on the SRA website is utterly incomprehensible) business is viable at all, and TLinux remains popular in Japan, I think this was an excellent buy.

Re:Clarifications; did SRA spend their $mil well?

[sam_handelman]

Choke. Sorry.

SRA will continue to operate in an independent fashion, however, at least for a while (I think).

Turbolinux will continue to operate in an independent fashion. It's morning, my bad. The irony of mocking someone's bad syntax and then getting words reversed in my own posting is not lost on me.

Re:Clarifications; did SRA spend their $mil well?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is - did SRA make a good buy for their $1 million dollars?

Well, a brand name and installed customer base isn't too bad a deal, but $1 million still seems a little steep for that. If TurboLinux burnt $100 million, there can't be that many revenue generating customers?

SCORE 2 Insightful?

[fdisk3hs]

Stupid troll can't make any distro work except Mandrake. Where is the insight? He probably reinstalls from scratch every two days because it won't boot into X anymore...

MOD HIM DOWN.
TROLL.
KILL.

BAD MODERATOR. NO DONUT.

Re:SCORE 2 Insightful?

[mbourgon]

Hey, at least I didn't lose any karma on that. Actually, I ran Debian (first CLOS, then Debian) for about 2 years, decided to try out Lycoris, hated that, went Red Hat (um, why doesn't redhat-network-config get installed by default?), over to Mandrake (using currently), and am playing with SuSE.

Oddly enough, X died a week or so ago on my Mandrake box, so I'll go fix later this week, when I have some time. Why is it my fault if I install an EASY TO USE distro and then I don't want to learn all the intracacies in order to get a GUI? This is why Linux isn't on the desktop yet.

My goal on playing with all the distros periodically is to find one that our end users could deal with, and that would make a nice, easy, friendly workstation/server for me. So that I don't ever need Windows.

Oh and the insight - the original question. What the hell differentiates TurboLinux? (Now I know - Japanese support)

And some more -

Lycoris - really wants to be XP.
CLOS - Only OS I'd trust my parents with, even outdated as it is (and yes, I config'd it to update packages - and that broke it utterly)
Xandros - if it ever comes out, will be the OS I give my parents.
Gentoo - a true roll your own linux. It'll finish compiling next week. ;)

Re:SCORE 2 Insightful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Corel really that good? I have never used it, but know that they were almost done with Corel 3 when it died and never released it. Xandros is based on the Corel 3 codebase. Might be some potential there, I am currently using Mandrake 9.0 and like it.

Re:SCORE 2 Insightful?

[Arandir]

The best thing about Corel LinuxOS was that it was small. Really. It asked you about three or four questions, then installed a very minimal default. You got a KDE desktop and that was it. On that desktop was an icon that allowed you to download a million other packages, but you didn't do that during the install.

I watched a greenhorn newbie install SuSE once. It was painful. He didn't have enough room for a complete full install, so he spent hours choosing between jed, joe, jove, emacs, xemacs, nvi, vim, elvis, pico and and a million other text editors. A newbie shouldn't have to choose between 7000 packages during the install. That is ridiculous.

An easy to use Linux installer will install just the basics necessary to get to a desktop. Even that minimal set of software is still going to give the user ten times the functionality of the full Windows install.

Re:SCORE 2 Insightful?

[mbourgon]

I liked it quite a bit. It made Debian easy, which is no small feat. Someone mentioned that a minimal Unix install is nice, and Debian does that, and so Corel did. What I liked about it was that it was fairly easy to run - all the basic stuff and end-user needed, the Corel Update (apt-get GUI), and it installs on almost anything, without asking you specific details about all your hardware. It just frickin worked. Nice.

Oh, and Xandros' web site offers a download of Corel Linux 2.

Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a plus)

[Lindril]

"Currently, They were sold by $1 million."

All your base are belong to us.

Re:This is why you can't pay people to write a fre

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy youre so wrong!
The main reason linux will prevail is the fact that its so diversified in its nature and still highly compatible among other distros. Where one dies we can scavenge the remains and get the goodies and continue as nothing much happened.
If they succed to kill RedHat there are other ready to pick up where they left off at the very last line of code they wrote.

This is what Microsoft is so afraid of and this is why they shit their pants everytime another big company successes in using linux.

Someone cue the Queen baseline...

[MidKnight]

"Dum dum dum ... another one bites the dust."

Hindsight being 20-20 and all, but I don't think this should surprise anyone. During the late 90's lots of techies were excited about Linux because of the freedom it gave them in twiddling the bits of modern operating system themselves. Meanwhile, lots of venture capitalists & MBA's were excited because they saw in Linux an opportunity to start up their own personal Microsoft with virtually zero resources allocated to creating a product. So, throw some marketing $$$ at it, ride the wave, and soon they'd have their own fiefdom of clients running their operating system. They could leverage that installed base to make related deals and rake in the cash.

So, between the techies & the MBA's, who do you think is still excited? (Rhetorical question)

Now, enter popular Linux-related business plan #2: selling a "solution" instead of a software product. Great plan, right? IBM Global Services does that to the tune of $35 billion in revenue! Yeah, but IBM uses their huge hardware profit margins to seed their services plans. Plus they already had Fortune 100 clients as part of their previously installed base to draw from. Oh yeah, and they also have freaking enormous economies of scale to use as well.

My point to this little ramble is that most Linux distros suffer from overly optimistic business plans that, especially in today economy, just don't work. If a Linux distribution is the shining center of your business plan, then in the end you'll be forced to sit at the children's table when it comes to dividing up the revenue pie. So, stories like TurboLinux are pretty common these days, and probably will continue to be for the forseeable future.

Now where'd I put that Queen CD....

--Mid

Re:Someone cue the Queen baseline...

[HiThere]

As long as the distributions keep coming, and stay GPL, it's worth it.

It would be really nice to have a fortune, but I don't waste my money on lottery tickets. What Linux buys, what the GPL buys, is freedom. I need to make a living too, and dreams are nice. But I can make a living working for someone else, as long as the software is Linux, and if I help them succeed, I'm still moving it forwards.

Now, in acutality, I'm in a basically windows shop, and I only have two copies of Linux installed at work, one of them dual-boot. But I have been refusing to install Windows software over license issues. Most people think I'm crazy, and that the licenses don't matter, but not all. Not anymore. Too much evidence. So by keeping Linux present, I'm keeping an option open.
Currently I'm moving a project from MS Access to Java. Well, Java isn't perfect, but it's cross-platform. And that's another application that isn't tied to windows. Every step helps.

So, TurboLinux had a bad business model or method. Too bad. I wish that they had been more successful. I hope that they are successful as a part of the new corporation. But if not, it sounds like there are Korean and Chinese distributions coming up that could fill their footsteps. And appearantly China intends to honor the GPL. (If they didn't, it wouldn't be Linux, no matter what it said on the box.)

Emergancy Jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

A horse walks into a bar. The barman says to the horse "Why the long face?"

A bear walks into a bar and says to the barman "I'd like a pint...
.
.
.
.
.
and a packet of crisps, please"

The barman says to the bear "Sure, but why the big paws?"

That depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is the giver and who is the reciever???

Is this a post from the future?

[Viol8]

Whats XF96Config when its at home?

Re:Is this a post from the future?

[Vanders]

Its Xf86config with a typo. I'm sure you've noticed how close those pesky 8 and 9 keys are.

Care to point it out then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no irony in your post, just a shit rehash of a shit joke that was done twice before you did it.

Re:Care to point it out then?

[yatest5]

I think you may find the shit joke had been done several times before even those two trailblazers in front of me had done it

LINUX/FREE SOFTWARE INFLATED BY TECH BUBBLE

[slashnot007]

Is it possible the current quality in linux has come about because of Tech investment bubble? That is all those investment dollars that never led to a profit did go to pay salaries of programmers who helped advance Linux and Gnu and all the other parts of the distributions.

We may not want to admit this but maybe this is what allowed LINUX to catch up to Microsoft in userfreindlyness and establish a minimal set of applications. For example, would star office or any of the other office suites have reached their final form or have even tech support available had not their hosting companies like Sun profited from the surge of investment cash?

Sure you might point to some app that was a good bussiness decision for a company to have produced in hindsight, but how many other compaines tried and died in the mean time. I argue that it was the tech bubble the allowed experimentation and risk taking to creat these apps

Since the tech bubble has popped maybe so will the explosion in linux software and linux quality. If so then it might be reasonable to ask if the linux and possibly gnu (anti-) bussiness models, indeed the whole free-software movement will no longer be good models.

open source may survive but it will look more like a BSD model rather than a GPL.

Re:LINUX/FREE SOFTWARE INFLATED BY TECH BUBBLE

[WinterSolstice]

You have some good points. I don't know that I agree that all of the quality software came from investment captial, however. I do think that some of the major steps forward did, and I am positive that the buzz generated attracted more quality developers than ever before.

I disagree that it will all go away, since it existed before venture capital, and will continue to exist after venture capital. Some people have an actual opinion about their OS now, and that is an improvement worth any amount of money. Nobody considered that 5 years ago. I worked in a business where we ran OS/2 in order to use SNA, host emulation, and remote desktop control and we were ridiculed. We then went to Windows, and suffered seriously. Windows wasn't ready then, and is barely ready now.

I think that the companies who have realized that there are actual choices in platform are the biggest winners. It's no longer rubberstamp. There is now that moment of hesitation... MS Access, or Postgres? Should I use x, or y for our firewall?

Let's also not forget that Linux as an embedded OS is taking major strides. It's everything a lot of people want in an embedded OS.

So I don't agree that it's over. I think that it will just adjust.

-WS

No, This how linux developement WAS paid for.

[slashnot007]

No no no... that 99 million and many more like it was what raised linux up from the primordial soup in the first place. the real question is where is the next 99 million coming from? Microsoft has it, but will the linux community? The future may mean that BSD, and companies like apple, will be the way unix can pay for itself. The good news is that having grown the unix install base, the cost per copy of the commerical unix will drop (regard how SUN used to charge an intolerable price for solaris but thats because they only had a few users to pay for all their dev costs). Maybe this will allow unix to be price cometitive with MS windows.

Is it possible the current quality in linux has come about because of Tech investment bubble? That is all those investment dollars that never led to a profit did go to pay salaries of programmers who helped advance Linux and Gnu and all the other parts of the distributions.

We may not want to admit this but maybe this is what allowed LINUX to catch up to Microsoft in userfreindlyness and establish a minimal set of applications. For example, would star office or any of the other office suites have reached their final form or have even tech support available had not their hosting companies like Sun profited from the surge of investment cash?

Sure you might point to some app that was a good bussiness decision for a company to have produced in hindsight, but how many other compaines tried and died in the mean time. I argue that it was the tech bubble the allowed experimentation and risk taking to creat these apps

Since the tech bubble has popped maybe so will the explosion in linux software and linux quality. If so then it might be reasonable to ask if the linux and possibly gnu (anti-) bussiness models, indeed the whole free-software movement will no longer be good models.

open source may survive but it will look more like a BSD model rather than a GPL.

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody set us up the bomb indeed.

Ever tried a mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like the sort of user has grown beyond boasting specs to getting something accomplished.

We'd love to have you.

Re:Ever tried a mac?

[User 956]

You sound like the sort of user has grown beyond boasting specs to getting something accomplished.

We'd love to have you.

What are you, in a cult? Does he have to shave his head and kill his parents to join, or is it just the standard "give us all your money and worldly posessions"?

Thanks, but I'm spoken for

[Vanders]

I'm trying to go one better with Open Source. Hey, you never know, we might just do it.

If not, then who knows? :)

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I still want to get paid for bad spelling and poor english. In fact, I want to get paid to sit around and reject worthwhile articles while posting complete and utter crap (including fucking blatant advertising) all while having poor english grammar and spelling!

Clustered filesystems...

[tjrw]

If you're talking about OCFS for Linux (announced at LinuxWorld), it's nothing like AdvFS or a "real" clustered filesystem. It is intended to allow Oracle 9i RAC to operate in a filesystem environment and is explicitly documented as not being intended for use as a true filesystem replacement. A brief glance at the current implementation will show you why. Although it offers most of the standard filesystem semantics, performance for use as a general-purpose filesystem (particularly metadata-update intensive) would be quite horrible. Since there is hardly any metadata activity when running Oracle on the filesystem, this would not be a problem.

Tim

Now TurboLinux has a new name...

[Chagatai]

The Japanese, in a new marketing strategy, have decided to change the name from TurboLinux to Supaa Numbaa 1 Happy Cow Bang Lucky Henshin Mega Turbo Linux!!!

Re:sheesh....tolerance?

[sehryan]

Would you prefer slashdot stories take another 8 hours to hit, so they can be vetted by an editor?

Yeah, the /. editors have more important things they have to be doing instead of editing blurbs like...like...coming up with new words for karma levels, and making sure that ads for .NET always show up on any anti-MS article they post. Oh, and coming up with new excuses to not cache the pages they link to. These things are more important to the community than you might think! Show some appreciation!

If you want cleanly editted news, read ZDNet. Notice how they don't have as much variety or community?

And I know that after I flame an editor for a crap post, and then I am flamed in return...God, my sense of community is tripled. God bless the /. XPerience!

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[Artifex]

The editor didn't write that. He was quoting the person who sent in the submission.

You have temporal blindness

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from being an anal retentive, it is quite clear from the context of my remark that I was refering to this article thread directly. I know full well how often idiots like you delight in posting the same shit joke over and over again, and it pains me to it.

On top of that, if so many people have posted the exact same shit joke before you, why did you even bother? Do have ADD, or just a poor enough sense of humour to find such a shit joke funny?

Re:This is why you can't pay people to write a fre

[rootslash]

Actually it's why linux will continue to succeed dumbass. One company can go belly up and it means shit all for linux as an OS.

That could be a Martha Stewart recipe...

[mnemotronic]

How to convert that pesky $100 million into a much more managable $1 million.

Step 1. Put it into a Linux company

You're done! There, wasn't that easy? And notice how it compliments the seat cushions.

Next week, we'll show you how to use your personal contacts and insider information to convert that $1 million right back into $100 million! Stay tuned!

Read this:

[Anonymous Coward]

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK:
Open Letter to America from a Canadian

by W.R. McDougall

Dear America:

And so it has come to this. Your once-great nation has fallen into madness, an affliction of mass denial that brings shivers up the spines of millions outside your borders. Yours is a sick nation. But most of you carry on as though nothing at all is the matter.

Dark, evil operations run rampant in the secret corners of your government institutions. A dubiously constituted government pursues war at will anywhere on earth, discussing nuclear options that become points for cheerful chatter over lunch. Your military and intelligence agencies employ terrorist tactics around the globe even as they insist that such tactics are necessary in the fight against terrorism.

You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools.

Your constitution is a shambles thanks to "national security" measures resulting from what might well be U.S.-government-sanctioned terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., covert provocations designed to justify a malevolent, poisonous, oil-based military economy.

Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn't you America, and make others pay with their blood.

At the same time, you stand by as the Israelis' secular Zionists--whom you support through the supply of arms and money--slaughter untold numbers of innocents in the West Bank, then blame the Palestinians for bringing the terror upon themselves. (True, there are abominable Arab suicide bombers in Israel's midst. But are they not driven to madness and desperation by your infernal support of international terrorist politics?)

As I write these words, you support a nation run by a convicted murderer by the name of Ariel Sharon who with impunity is carrying out war crimes as cruel and horrendous as those of other sadistic tyrants in history. And you say, in your utter cynicism, 'When will these Palestinians bring this war to an end?'

You recklessly wage combat on other fronts, too. At home, your War on Drugs is a disastrous 30-year folly--a gigantic con game designed to benefit lethal cartels, corrupt politicians and menacing intelligence agencies across the planet.....

With your government's support, crooked multinationals like Monsanto buy up the world's water supplies, and take possession of the world's vegetation through Frankenstein technology already known to cause illness.

Does the FDA care about any of this? It does not. It has long been on the bandwagon to foist genetically altered food on the Guinea Pigs of the country--including every man, woman and child on America's increasingly toxic soil.

You are a nation of suckers, America, to be bled dry of your hard-earned pay through outrageous bank schemes, Wall Street rip-offs and fake government budget grabs. Your Pentagon cannot account for trillions in lost dollars.

Does this bother you? Not in the least.

Your whole economy is controlled by what is for the most part ravenous, international private banking interests in the form of The Federal Reserve, which with your government's consent leads you down the garden path to certain financial ruin thanks to a national debt you will never be able to repay.

How is it that private banks are responsible for issuing your currency? How is it that they are allowed to charge ridiculous interest rates on what they issue? By decree, this was supposed to be the responsibility of your government, which could create its own currency without charging interest.

Do you realize your congress could dismiss these banks in an instant if it so wished? But don't ever count on it. More important matters are pressing. The upcoming election needs investment.

These very same money men are the ones who, through unmonitored and unrepresentative world committees, are driving countries like Argentina into hopeless debt and social upheaval. These greedy overlords are creating strife and suffering on a scale too tragic for words in nation after nation. Just look at Africa.

They've got their sights on America, now, too; disrupting economic stability through so-called free trade initiatives and provisions for special favors and the endless flow of cash to corporate monstrosities like Enron.

Amid all this, where are those who are supposed to represent your interests, America? For the most part, your congressional representatives are nothing but swine gathering at the corporate troughs. Your president is a white-collar thug, a hypocrite who through his actions celebrates war, repression and greed even as he gives lip service to peace, freedom and justice.

George W. Bush deceives you daily, the war monger hiding behind a phony patriotism. He is an Enron buddy boy, a spoiled child lying in his teeth about his past and current dirty deeds.

Does he care about you America? Hardly. This is altogether obvious to those outside your borders who are politically aware and awake to the world around them.

You were never concerned about the disgraceful practices of George's ruthless father, either, a Bin-Laden cohort and friend to criminals and killers in global drug, oil and terrorist enterprises. Iran. Vietnam. El Salvador. Chile. Guatemala. Iraq. And on and on. The never-ending bully-boy story of blood, guns, drugs and money.

Does any of this matter? No, it's simply time to eat.

Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."

Few among you are the least bit concerned that no real investigation of 911 has taken place, that no serious investigation of the anthrax attacks is moving forward, that no authentic investigation of Enron, or the murder of one of its top executives, is underway.

How many of you give the slightest damn about the totalitarian measures your government is taking to keep its secret meetings, grubby files and treasonous activities from your eyes?....

When did you stop caring, America? Was it after your own FBI and intelligence agencies plotted the murder of President John F. Kennedy? Or is this just the raving lunacy of the conspiracy nut? What does your gut tell you, America? Is something a little amiss here?

Forget about it. Have some Pepto-Bismol.

Today, in futility, your own government goes to court against itself for information you are entitled to by law. But this is hardly deemed vital news in the community. It is a fleeting reference in an electronic sea of meaningless banter. For proof, just look to all the spineless wimps who constitute your mainstream news media.

Today, you excoriate, ridicule and ostracize the brave and true among you. Your best investigative journalists are fired from their jobs and ignored. Congress's few courageous souls are laughed at and dismissed out of hand as crackpots. The most honest and conscientious political leader in the country, Ralph Nader, is a powerless, near-invisible curiosity easily side-lined by hired goons.

America, you are a goddamn shame.

What law matters now in your despicable state? What justice? What truth?

When will you wake up?

If you had your druthers, you would right now gather your courage, take to the streets and march on Washington D.C in the millions. But I know you will do no such thing. The vast majority of you are spiritually, emotionally and intellectually dead.

As I write these words, I can only imagine what additional horrors your shadow government might be planning in what will surely be an attempt to justify militarism and totalitarianism on a universal scale. A nuclear explosion in one of your cities, perhaps? A massive bio-chemical attack?

Or perhaps it will be some Arab terrorist who finally commits the terrible deed, his last thought before death being the promises you made to him before you killed his family.

Mr. McDougall originally wrote this letter to the Washington Post, but that paper has not yet printed it.

Re:Read this:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh go away you left wing, piece of crap liberal meatheat with absolutely no clue what reality is. Israel isn't sending little kids to blow themselves up on busses bonehead.

Second of all dumbass, have you bothered to read the news lately?

ENRON IS A DEMOCRATICE SCANDAL WHY DO YOU THINK THE MEDIA IS BACKING OFF IT

ENRON DONATED $100,000 to the Democratic National Commite, their *LARGEST* donation ever.

While we are on that subject, why don't you ask the head of The Democratic Nation Party about his dealings with Global Crossing. He got like 1 million in stock before they even went public. AND MY MY MY ALL OF A SUDDEN THE CEO OF ENRON GOT TO PLAY GOLF WITH CLINTON

Go listen to www.warroom.com and get a clue

YOU STUPID CANADIAN TERRORIST!
WHY DO I CALL YOU A TERRORIST?

SEE THE CANADIAN SCI FI SERIES - LEXX AND EARTH FINAL CONFLICT!

ENOUGH SAID

auto262814@hushmail.com

Re:Read this:

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify 1 point

The comment about all canadians being terrorists was a joke :)

auto262814@hushmail.com

Re:Read this:

[Solid StaTe_1]

Your stupid.

-A proud Canadian.

Canada - n : a nation in northern North America; the French were the first Europeans to settle in mainland Canada; "the border between the United States and Canada is the longest unguarded border in the world" Also, the best place in the world.

Re:Read this:

[Prothonotar]

I believe that should be "you're stupid". Thank you.

Re:Read this:

[Solid StaTe_1]

Indeed. it seems you are correct. Both spellings are corect, however, the use of "your" in the context of the sentence is not. Thank you for pointing that mistake out. I shall not make it again.

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[laserjet]

That is true... but he is an editor. It would not be against the law to edit.

Re:This is why you can't pay people to write a fre

[Anonymous Coward]

"One company can go belly up and it means shit all for linux as an OS"

Thats a pretty pathetic excuse for "strength" in an OS.

What happens when all of the VCs realize that there is no real money in Linux? Have you ever realized that most Linux related companies are WAY in the red? Lots of revenue but no income.

I have a feeling that one day Redhat will be the last man standing in the Linux world... and they will end up the "open source microsoft"

It's like those cookies

[JMZero]

They paid more than they expected for Lunix, now they're distributing it for free to get back at that stupid manager who they thought meant $2.50 when he said two-fifty but really meant $250.

Forward this on!

.

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[aardvarkjoe]

I shudder to think what that sentence would have said had Taco touched it.

The entire linux business is that which dies last

[gelfling]

It's pure evolution baby. The winner is the last one breathing. And the prize is dominion over the boneyard.

Sheesh there used to be a real computer industry now it's just some shitty Soviet monopoly and everthing else is on life support. And the monopoly is on life support too.

What's wrong with $1Million?

[zrk]

Didn't you hear, they hired Dr. Evil to sell off the business??

oops, wrong story

[jakob_grimm]

TurboLinux dies

Threw away cash with both hands

Mighty few users

Reinvent the wheel

[SomeOtherGuy]

I can think of some pretty cool stuff to do with 100 meeelion dollars. Reinventing the wheel is not one of them. Can you imagine if you invested 100 million into applications and left the distributions to the community? If I had a nickel for every dollar spent on making an "easier install" I could hire some pretty good people for a long time to work on some real apps. Think about it -- even a bad install would only take a day or two....What really would stand out is what do you do once you have it installed? That could be years of usage -- vs. the difference between a 1 hour install and a 2 day install.

On the flipside -- the Eazel (sp?) people seemed to be pretty good at floating many million into what in the end was little more than a slow file manager. Proving that not only distributions can go broke. I say if you have that kind of money -- take it and pay the people (teams) who are already working part time on existing "killer areas" (gimp, sane, usb support, abiword, gnumeric, etc) and pay them to do it fulltime as a real job with real deadlines, etc...etc...

Re:Reinvent the wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently Eazel spent most of the money on eazel services (remember - everyone was going to use nautilus to download and install software from eazel, and whatever else they planned - think click'n run but for a decent distro, and no doubt much nicer), and nautilus has become a really good file manager since then - it was too slow at 1.0 but thats probably because the company folded then (if they could have lasted a month or two longer it would have been a great file manager at 1.0)

Re:sheesh....tolerance?

[gmhowell]

No, the editors are up to something much more important than any of the things you imagine. Like playing a game that most of us finished two months ago.

Why not call Linux by it's true name?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flushix"

Of all the dot bombs, Linux has to be the shining star. More companies have burned more money and flamed out by distributing and supporting this non-os than any other single thing in the last 4 years.

Ok everyone! All at once now! Put your right hand against your forhead with the palm out and use your thumb and forefinger to make an "L".

To answer the inevitable question...

[MoNsTeR]

..."who the hell uses Turbolinux?"

I do.

It's like Redhat without the bullshit. It has great console-based configuration programs. It's i686 optimized (no longer that big of a deal though).

I hope this sale won't affect my favorite distro :(

..debian..

[gl4ss]

is imho just as easy to use as any other distribution, most of the stuff can be apt-getted or for convenience use dselect(actually, all stuff that's needed).

and updating is just simple matter of apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade

and my linux's way much cleaner since i started using debian and not such a hackjob my redhat installation was coupla of years back.

compiling stuff is a breeze too, just apt-get necessary devel stuff.

and if i'd like it easy to use as in go clickityclick i can(and did) apt-get kde3(unofficial debs tho), after i had apt-getted gnome and seen it to be too slow for my linux comp to handle.

number one rule for easy workability(is that even a word?) is as follows: "IF IT WON'T WORK, IT AIN'T EASY".

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[WNight]

Actually, it would be considered unprofessional to present a quote and edit it transparently.

And what's the harm with reading something with stilted English? It did come from someone who likely didn't speak English natively...

If you don't like it here, leave. Seriously, I wish you would.

Being Geeky fails

[ToasterTester]

TurboLinux failed because they never understood that typical distro customers are mainly desktop users. Desktop users want a GUI frilly multi-media, office suite stuffage. Turbo had some nice text based utilities, came fairly secure out of the box, and they spent a lot on server features. Their TurboCluster load balancer, then distributed application tools they did with IBM and other tools. They focused a lot on the corporate market that wasn't ready for them.

Re:sheesh....tolerance?

[Fizzol]

Some of us are *still* waiting to play that game that most of you finished two months ago.

*Stares at unused $60 box on shelf*

*gumble* *Linux client* *grumble* *kick bioware* *grumble*

More Info

[soramimicake]

Press Release from Turbolinux Inc.

Press Release from Turbolinux Japan (in Japanese)

Another article from NikkeiBP (in Japanese)

The main points are:

• Turbolinux Inc. sold Turbolinux Japan K.K. (its Japanese subsidary) to SRA. (This is the $1 mil. transaction according to Slashdot Japan (in Japanese))
• Turbolinux Japan K.K. will become the new Turbolinux Inc.
• Turbolinux Inc. also sold all its Linux distribution business, logo, trademarks to SRA, but the price is not yet disclosed.
• SRA is also planning to buy the Chinese and Korean joint ventures between Turbolinux Inc. and local companies.
• The old Turbolinux Inc. will change its name to CenterRex and focus on software it developed like PowerCockpit or EnFusion.

So yes, Turbolinux Inc. seems to be getting out of the distribution business altogether and they are not going to retain the name and sell Turbos :-)

Re:UnitedLinux: American Motors, 1954

[Anna Merikin]

United Linux reminds me of when Nash, Hudson and Wyllys combined (Packard and Studebaker did the same for the same reason) to try to salvage businesses that could not compete with the giants (GM, Ford and Chrysler.)

While AMC became one company and United Linux will remain (so it says) a group of independent companies, the economies of scale they hope for will not mean a thing without enough market share to make it work.

This is not to give RH a win by default; at the same time (1954) that I was a high school student looking toward becoming an automotive engineer, GM sent a rep to talk during career day, and he predicted in the near future, there would be only three carmakers in the world: GM, Ford and Chrysler as there was no way to gather enough capitalization and market share anymore.

This was in the same year Soichiro Honda screwed his first washing-machine motor onto a bicycle frame....

Turbolinux was cool

[Anonymous Coward]

but we could see it coming, first the fact taht there hasnt been any ISO image of their latest run ( TurboLinux Server 7.0 ), also the fact that no news whatsoever came from them after the rumour of last months.....

anyway, Turbolinux was and is still a cool distro, easy to get up, easy to manage. Their tubotools console based utlities should be used by others. They had adapted distro for Oracle or DB2 servers ( that count in enterprise ) and i believe they were the first to ditch out telnet altogether and have just SSH.

Well it was great but i got not much of a quarter of a slice of hope to see them come back from the grave..

Farewell, You'll be missed.

Re:sheesh....tolerance?

[gmhowell]

I'm looking forward to the Linux client. Plan on playing again. This time as an evil magic user of some sort.

"use the grammer (sic) checker, dude."

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL. Take your own advice, and throw in the spell-checker with it, eh?

In case you didn't get the joke, it's grammar.

The GPL kills economy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Business as usual.

Another One Bites The Dust

[Anonymous Coward]

if a Linux distro falls but nobody is around to hear it, does it make any noise?

Re:The entire linux business is that which dies la

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sheesh there used to be a real computer industry now it's just some shitty Soviet monopoly and everthing else is on life support. And the monopoly is on life support too.

I wish *I* had a $38BILLION oxygen tank like that monopoly does; I think the rumors of their impending death have been greatly exaggerated.

good engish

[Anonymous Coward]

and in another well written slashdot piece:
turbo linux am the bestest distro.

What about all their other software the took??

[Anonymous Coward]

Turbolinux bought a whole bunch of opensource projects and turned them into closed source like clustor. Are we every going to see these projects again? They didn't do much to them besides buy off the authors and then sell them. Some of the stuff they had was great, but not worth what they wanted to sell it for.

They were not a nice Linux company, I for one am very happy to see them disappear.

Re:Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a pl

[Anonymous Coward]

It's somebody set up us the bomb... Get your imitations of confused and messy attempts at English right, people! :oP

I used to work for TurboLinux...

[BigWhale]

... sort of... :) I wasn't their employee, but I worked for a company that developed ClusterServer and Enfuzion. No, they weren't developed in Japan or USA, but mostly in Slovenia (That's Europe... :P ). :)

I was working in IT and helping with everything Cluster Server too and later I was porting TurboLinux to IBM's RS6000 and AS400 platforms.

It's a shame that TurboLinux went down, why I never understood, bad marketing I guess. It was fun working for them, I don't care about the company, but there are hours of work that are now completely lost and who knows what will happen with the Linux part of Turbo. :) Maybe they'll continue to develop ClusterServer, it was pretty cool load balancing software with all the bells and whistles or Enfuzion. Or make them OpenSource... That'd be cool... ;>

So much for the Turbo... Heh...