Memo Confirms IBM Move To Linux Desktop?

m5shiv writes "The Inquirer is reporting on an allegedly leaked internal memo from IBM CIO Bob Greenberg discussing IBM's move to a Linux desktop: 'Our chairman has challenged the IT organization, and indeed all of IBM, to move to a Linux based desktop before the end of 2005. This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools with open standards based equivalents.' The enemy of my enemy is my friend?"

Comments

ITYM

[Anonymous Coward]

The enemy of my enemy is .. useful.

Re:ITYM

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually In a recent Newsletter for Lindows, (Michael's Minute) they mention a CEO (they don'y name who) coming to vist them being really impressed and deciding to consider implementation by about 2005...I think we have just found the rest of the story...

{
Michael's Minute: The CEO Challenge

We recently had the CEO of a large enterprise visit our offices here in San Diego to look at LindowsOS. This company has over $1 Billion in annual revenues. The CEO told us that they've had enough of Microsoft's expensive, cumbersome and restrictive licensing, as well as the costs they have incurred dealing with viruses, bugs, crashes, and security patches. The interesting thing, however, was that this CEO didn't have any experience or knowledge of Linux whatsoever. The only thing he knew was that Linux was "supposed to be" much more stable, secure and affordable than Microsoft's products. Armed with only these scant (although very important) data points, he traveled several states to meet with us, wanting to see for himself if Linux really was a viable option for his company.

I also found it interesting that this CEO came to meet with us personally, rather than just dispatching someone from his IT department. "I have found that IT departments often don't like change," he said. "That's why I'm here. I have had enough with the status quo treatment we get from Microsoft, and I want to see first hand if it's time for a change. Our company prides itself on early adoption of any innovation which can give us an edge over our competition--we're known for that. I'm starting to hear more and more that Linux could very well be such an innovation, so I want to see for myself if it is."

Thrilled at the opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of Linux to one so open-minded, we sat down in our conference room and proceeded to demonstrate LindowsOS.

He was "blown away" (his words, not mine).

I let him perform the installation, and he was completely amazed when he was able to do it in under 10 minutes with absolutely no help or assistance from us. This wasn't an exceptionally technical CEO, but he knew enough to realize that this was much simpler and easier than Microsoft XP.

LindowsOS editing popular document file types in StarOffice 7

After he had installed and started LindowsOS, he was next pleasantly surprised to find out how easy it was to check his email, instant message with his employees, and surf the web. He was particularly impressed with how beautiful the rendered fonts appeared, and with the myriad of files types and audio/video streams that LindowsOS handled. He had no idea at the level of compatibility we have achieved with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, as well as Flash, Java, MP3, QuickTime, AVI, and other popular content.

He had his notebook computer with him, running XP. From that machine, he emailed himself two documents, a business plan written in Word for Windows and a forecast in Excel. I had him retrieve these documents from his email on the LindowsOS machine. One click and they loaded. He made changes, saved them, then emailed them back to himself. He then returned to his XP machine, only to find that both documents opened without problem and contained the changes he had made to both.

CNR Aisles

I demonstrated how CNR (click and run) "Aisles" can be used by enterprises to deploy and manage all the applications throughout even the largest companies. It was obvious to the CEO that our CNR technology far outpaced what they were currently doing with XP and all of its CDs, activation codes, and restrictive licensing.

After the demonstration, he told me that migrating away from Microsoft not only appeared to be a real possibility, but something they should do right away. He then went on to ask me if it would be as easy to migrate as it appeared, based on what he had just witnessed. I told him, "Not entirely." I honestly explained that there would be some challenges ahead, and outlined for him what he could expec

Re:ITYM

[hey]

I don't think it was the CEO of IBM.
He doesn't need to see desktop Linux from Michael when there are tons of Linux people working at IBM.

winder if a new DE will come out of this

[handmedowns]

you'd think with all those developers using KDE or GNOME or whatever.. there'll be someone who re-invents the wheel again =P

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

God please.... I'm sick of the so-called "usability" and supposed "performance" of KDE and GNOME. I feel like I'm using some college sophomore's re-interpretation of MS Windows. If somebody came along and made a lightweight, dynamic windowing system and desktop environment for Linux, with real usability and minimalism, I'd shit my pants!

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[grub]

If somebody came along and made a lightweight, dynamic windowing system and desktop environment for Linux, with real usability and minimalism, I'd shit my pants!

May I suggest Windowmaker? Please post pictures of your feces-encrusted jeans by 12:00 GMT tommorrow.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[curious.corn]

If IBM wants to get this trough it needs to do a couple of things:
1. Take X11 and throw it out of the window. Build a FB acceled interface and make Qt/GTK use it. There already are some viable projects like DirectFB so IBM can simply inject some cash into it and strongarm the HW makers into more collaborative driver efforts.
2. Offer X11 as an add on like Apple; it's too useful for interoperability and compat but keeping it as a modified & bloated primary interface would make it too complicated for developers. Building a least-resistance clear cut route for them... they're lazy!
3. Buy Qt... LGPL it or offer it at dirt cheap prices... all specialist SW I've seen on WIN/UNIX is linked against Qt, wouldn't that be a better solution to wine (still interop but no OS/2 "might as well jmust go Windows right?")
4. Wait...
5. Give the finger to M$... >-]

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[droleary]

there'll be someone who re-invents the wheel again

With any luck, a round one this time instead of suffering with the two (main) horribly clunky desktop choices offered to Linux users now. If you really think KDE or GNOME are usable, you just haven't been around. If IBM had a clue, they'd push for more GNUstep development, which would actually give us all a shot at running some quality apps (commercially coming over from the Mac camp, of course) on Linux. A lot of things on Linux are nice, but making usable apps is simply not an itch that developers have scratched in free software.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely, they have their own distro they use internally (it is based on Red Hat).

I hope that is true, but wow, that seems ambitious. Lots of IBMers aren't sure what they are looking at when they see KDE (mostly for the non technical positions).

AC

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[caseih]

Sigh. No, replacing X11 with a framebuffer is not a good idea. OS X quartz is not a framebuffer interface and neither is the Win32 gdi. Go see www.freedesktop.org and see how X11 is coming kicking and screaming into the 21st century, doing things we never thought possible, all within the X11 framework, which is really showing remarkable durability. Within the year, X11 will have a compositing manager as powerful as quartz's compositing server and possibly even more flexible and powerful. And very fast too. The interesting thing about Keith Packards work with double-buffering windows is that the apparent speed of the screen drawing apears to be much faster than without the special effects.

And you can pry my network transparency from my cold dead hands.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[4of12]

1. Take X11 and throw it out of the window.

Better still, subvert from below by replacing it with a better, more modern frame buffer management system with a software library layer that provides full X functionality, including extensions.

Over time, though, developers of higher level graphical applications will start replacing calls to Xlib with Ylib calls, if they're faster and easier to work with.

But getting a more extensive set of free fonts with metric equivalence to the proprietary ones seems to be an overlooked but practically important ingredient to me.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[rifter]

God please.... I'm sick of the so-called "usability" and supposed "performance" of KDE and GNOME. I feel like I'm using some college sophomore's re-interpretation of MS Windows. If somebody came along and made a lightweight, dynamic windowing system and desktop environment for Linux, with real usability and minimalism, I'd shit my pants!

Personally, I prefer fvwm to all other GUIs. It is lightweight, easy to configure, stable, backwards compatable, and portable. It is also far more usable for me than any of the others I have tried, and that geos for KDE and GNOME as well.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[(H)elix1]

winder if a new DE will come out of this

It won't be KDE or Gnome - it will be WebSphere Portal applications w/Mozilla browser.

What desktop... (grin)

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Feztaa]

I agree that GNUStep is pretty cool, but it's main problem, much to my chagrin, is that it's ugly! GNUStep looks like they took OSX, ripped out all the cool quartz stuff, and then asked, "what can we do to make this interface the ghastliest, most horridly ugly thing the world has ever seen?"

Seriously, I'd rather eat dogshit than try to look at a GNUStep screenshot, it's just that terrible.

If IBM wants to take GNUStep and make it sexy, more power to them, but in the meantime, KDE will remain the coolest, most gorgeous linux desktop environment available.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[be-fan]

Not only that, but it may very well be the first technology to come out with fully OpenGL-accelerated 2D. OS X doesn't do it yet (Quartz "Extreme" uses GL only for compositing) and Longhorn won't do it until it comes out in 2006.

That'd really shut the anti-X11 folks up :)

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[be-fan]

Framebuffers are so passe! Modern hardware doesn't like you accessing its framebuffer. It prefers to work at a higher level. Consider the OpenGL rendering model:

Applications write drawing commands to a buffer.
When the buffer is full, the GL library makes a system call, and uses a special ioctl to DMA the command buffer into the graphics memory. The graphics card than carries out those commands.

That's very similar to how the X protocol works! You know why? Because both were designed to be abstract and network-transparent from the very beginning!

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[G-funk]

Not only that, but it may very well be the first technology to come out with fully OpenGL-accelerated 2D

If SGI wasn't doing it years ago.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[jbolden]

I'm trying to figure out if you are being funny or just really young. Anyway assuming the 2nd option, GNUStep is based on OpenStep which was based on NextStep. Rhapsidy (the first beta OSX) was based on OpenStep. So:

NextStep -> OpenStep / GnuStep -> Rhapsidy -> OSX.

So yes in some ways GNUStep is OSX with the "cool quartz stuff ripped out".

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[be-fan]

They probably were :) I actually meant to write "desktop" not "technology", and was referring speficially to the Win/Mac/Lin desktops.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Feztaa]

Yeah, I know, I was trying to make a joke (hint: people aren't usually serious when they talk about eating dogshit).

Seriously though (I mean it this time :), at a technical level, gnustep seems like a pretty cool DE, but it is really ugly.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Brandybuck]

Translation: I want a hot cup of Earl Grey tea, and it had better be a cappucino! If you want a plain window manager, then use a plain window manager. If you want a desktop, then use a desktop.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[autiger]

Exactly! Portal apps in Mozilla. Finally someone who reads other public IBM info and not just rumor from the Inquirer.

Mod parent up! (I can't because of my previous post.)

The other part of the equation is Eclipse. It's not just an IDE framework anymore. If you've been paying attention to it lately, you know that it's a framework that can support a Rich Client as well. And it runs on Linux.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Abreu]

Grub and Rifter have posted alternatives above, and I can also add blackbox to the list of suggestions regarding real usability and minimalism. ...

I know, I know... I have been trolled

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[droleary]

I agree that GNUStep is pretty cool, but it's main problem, much to my chagrin, is that it's ugly! GNUStep looks like they took OSX, ripped out all the cool quartz stuff, and then asked, "what can we do to make this interface the ghastliest, most horridly ugly thing the world has ever seen?"

It doesn't look like a cheap whore, if that's what you mean. The primary GUI is the classic NeXT look, which de-emphasized the system widgets in favor of the content; you know, the stuff that should actually matter. Making things pretty doesn't make them usable and, regardless, that is something the developer shouldn't have to care about. If an OS X developer uses an NSMenu, it "just worked" when it ran on Windows (using the Yellow Box) and it should "just work" when running with the current GNUstep look or any future theme that might get pushed forward.

That is, the big win with GNUstep is not what you see on the screen, but the OpenStep frameworks underneath. They're what Apple saw enough value in to buy NeXT for many millions and gave them a platform to build Mac OS X from. The free implementation provided by GNUstep could similarly be a basis for Linux getting a usable desktop, too. KDE won't do that and neither will GNOME, simply because there is no interest in developers making it usable beyond scratching their own itches. OpenStep was/is about developing for users, not other developers. Continue to ignore that and you continue to work without a real Linux desktop in the future.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Zirtix]

It's not about teaching people to use their computer any more. It's about transitioning from Windows. Gnome and KDE can do that. Gnustep can't.

Oh and there absolutely is interest in users from Gnome devs. What about the usability stuff done by Sun? That had a pretty big effect.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[IM6100]

I agree. And I was running a commercial binary-only Motif WM on Linux four years ago. Part of the niceness of FVWM is there's just one file to understand and maintain (~/.fvwm2rc ) not hidden futzes or config 'utilities' to add layers of croft. A FVWM desktop runs well enough that I've used it on 486 laptops.

That said, OpenMotif is now available, too, and it's pretty nice. Not as light/powerful as FVWM, though.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[eggnet]

And they'd end up with a solution that wouldn't be as good as OS X.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Feztaa]

That is, the big win with GNUstep is not what you see on the screen, but the OpenStep frameworks underneath.

Yes, I know, I've investigated this already, and that's exactly what I'm talking about! The OpenStep frameworks underneath GNUStep are very cool, but it's apparent that the GNUStep people have gone to great lengths to give the interface a disgustingly ugly user interface.

Making things pretty doesn't make them usable

Very true! But if you want any hope of users using your interface and liking it, it will be pretty. An ugly UI is going to go nowhere, fast.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[10Ghz]

Windowmaker is not a Desktop Environment. It's more like a windowmanager.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[mixmasta]

Linux with the Workplace Shell!! Or, was it called Presentation manager or something?

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[0x0d0a]

1. Take X11 and throw it out of the window. Build a FB acceled interface and make Qt/GTK use it. There already are some viable projects like DirectFB so IBM can simply inject some cash into it and strongarm the HW makers into more collaborative driver efforts.

For most operations, a FB will be significantly more CPU intensive than what is done now (and is hardware accelerated).

2. Offer X11 as an add on like Apple; it's too useful for interoperability and compat but keeping it as a modified & bloated primary interface would make it too complicated for developers. Building a least-resistance clear cut route for them... they're lazy!

True. Which is why nobody writes to Xlib. Xlib was nicely designed to build toolkits on top of. And GTK+ and Qt (which you are advocating using) *are* written to, which lets you use X11 for free.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like you've never used the IRIX desktop. The 3D opengl wallpapers were damn sweet.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[dasunt]

Before advocating getting rid of X, ask yourself, what's so bad about it?

Is it because its ugly? That's the apps and the environment.

Is it because its slow? X runs just fine on low end hardware. Pentium era machines have no problem with it. Perhaps you are confusing X with the window manager/desktop environment.

Is it because its hard to configure? That's one implimentation of X. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Does network transparency scare you? Fine, don't use it. X will use unix sockets instead, which are pretty damn fast.

Are you scared by X's memory usage in `top' or similiar commands? Why not google to see what that number really includes before complaining about X.

** A happy X user. **

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[pellaeon]

> And you can pry my network transparency from my cold dead hands.

I agree with you totally. Administering a network of about 100 linux thin clients running off a couple of linux servers without that transparency would be painful in the extreme. (Not that we have that many yet over here - only 26 so far - but we'll get there :)

Let's hope your other comments turn out to be true...

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[chthon]

The Presentation Manager was the API used to program OS/2 graphical applications.

What you got on screen was the Workplace Shell.

Jurgen

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

It has menus, multiple virtual desktops, iconic views of apps.. sounds more like a DE to me.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[rjamestaylor]

Probably something to counter Sun's Java Desktop that will be completely portable between OSX, Windows xx, UNIX, Linux, TiVo, OpenToaster, etc., that will not only allow IBM to scale high and low, but obviate, at once, Microsoft, Intel, and Sun.

Speaking of Intel, has anyone heard Intel pipe up and chide SCO over iBCS 1/2 in relation to the "header files" infringement claimss? Hmm. Didn't think so. MS, Sun and Intel are screwed.

Off topic, I laugh everytime I think how close Sun came to joining the Eclipse project. In my mind the scenario goes like this:

• The technical people at Sun notice Eclipse
  and are duly impressed -- a quality
  Open Source project producing a tool with
  admirable Java support; they see an
  opportunity to leverage the community's help
  in providing a truly useful IDE (and more).
  Talks begin, things start moving and word gets
  out in the public about Sun's interest
  in the project.

  So, one day the matter rises
  to McNeely's office where he blows his
  top and says, "What the hell are you
  thinking!? Don't you know what an 'Eclipse'
  is? Do you think they named it that by
  ACCIDENT? Out! GET OUT of my &*%^(*# OFFICE!"

Did I mention I haven't slept this week?

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[scrytch]

> The primary GUI is the classic NeXT look, which de-emphasized the system widgets in favor of the content

Is that then why the, ah, content of checkboxes is hardly visible in *step? Or why every widget looks like it came out of a soviet submarine: thick, metallic, and harsh? I've never seen a widget set that tried to look so "bumpy" as *step.

Then there's the horizontal scrolled layout of buttons and vertical menus. There's a reason the rest of the world repudiated this design, and Apple's HCI folks will go into great painful detail telling you about it.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

A really advanced implementation would let you have good remote access. I know I'm dreaming, but being able to have accelleration while at the console, but still be able to access the exact same session remotely would be awfully nice for those who like to pick things up from anywhere (and yes, I do use screen and VNC).

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[EnderWiggnz]

the drawing instructions come in too damn slow over the wire. you cant perform the shortcuts and tricks without knowing what the next N instructions are.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[tyrione]

GNUStep is nowhere near as elegant as NeXStep/Openstep--I supported that beautiful OS at NeXT daily, as well as at Apple Enterprise Support. What GNUStep folks need to do and I really want them to do this because while I'm not using a PPC running OS X I want to be able to develop on Linux with ObjC running KDE having Native Objective-C Language Bindings.
KDE Native Developer Language Bindings List
So far I count

• Python
• Perl
• Java (sort of but not good enough)/outdated --what about a Qt version of Eclipse?
• C#--gawd, but understandable
• Ruby
• Smoke
• ECMAScript

Where the heck is ObjC? One of the biggest issues presently on Debian with GNUStep is configuration and getting the damn Font issues resolved. Spending hours making it launch without having a NSFont host of issues is disheartening and gives the impression that it is really immature, when we know that the Openstep Spec was published in 1994. And no Wmaker is not Openstep. If Someone with the skills I don't posess could develop ObjC language support natively within Eclipse I would be ecstatic! WOLips is quite interesting for Java and WebObjects but what about GNUStep/Cocoa IDE support within Eclipse on Linux? On OS X well just give me Xcode.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[EnderWiggnz]

>True. Which is why nobody writes to Xlib

yeh - if you find yourself writing calls to XLib, you're pretty f'ing deep in shit. The XServer, Window Managers, Toolkits, and *certain special* apps write directly to XLib, but just about nothing else does.

Its like complaining string manipulation in libc is too complex, so libc nees to be replaced.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[kasperd]

Is it because its slow? X runs just fine on low end hardware. Pentium era machines have no problem with it. Perhaps you are confusing X with the window manager/desktop environment.

But which efficient environments do modern distributions have? On Fedora Core 1 I see four options GNOME, KDE, TWM, and Failsafe Terminal. That is two times bloatware, and two times too primitive for the average user. Where is the nice stable configurable KDE or GNOME like environment, that will not use a lot of RAM and CPU power?

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[be-fan]

Not necessarily. OpenGL works just fine over the wire, given a good network connection.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[EnderWiggnz]

your experience is different than mine then...

i've tried to get opengl working over the wire, and had success getting the 2d renderring to work ok, but once you cross into ANYTHING 3d animated, the optimizations fall apart.

lets put it this way - opengl over the wire aint good enough for government work, if'n ya know what i mean...

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Corporate Gadfly]

But which efficient environments do modern distributions have? On Fedora Core 1 I see four options GNOME, KDE, TWM, and Failsafe Terminal. That is two times bloatware, and two times too primitive for the average user. Where is the nice stable configurable KDE or GNOME like environment, that will not use a lot of RAM and CPU power?

You ask where is it? It's here and is called FluxBox.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[jubei]

IceWM is nice. As is the Rox desktop. WindowMaker is fairly decent.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[42forty-two42]

Framebuffer is fine with one program, but you can't have multiple programs just randomly writing to one bitmap. Or fighting over the mouse/keyboard in fact. X's primary purpose is to mediate multiple programs accessing the hardware.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[WNight]

I don't understand where you're coming from.

KDE is usable, very, and pretty. When my parents come to visit my mom is perfectly comfortable fiding Mozilla and opening it to browse, etc. She's downloaded files and saved them, created directories in the save-file dialog, etc. She hasn't really hit a problem with it, and she's even agreed to have me put Linux on her next PC so I can fix it remotely, instead of taking up to a week to get to her place to fix virus problems and broken email issues, etc.

What you can't do is stuff that only power users want to do, cut and paste between vastly different applications (going from Mozilla to Open Office *usually* preserves table formatting, but other combos don't work so well.) Also, embedding a graph into a document, etc, is fairly clunky and has to be explicitly supported by the app, unlike in Windows where you can theoretically embed anything (though this doesn't really work).

What do you see as being to end-user level problems?

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[minusthink]

I love fvwm. Used it for years (i use sawfish now just because I'm a huge lisp fan). I love fvwm's stability, flexibility, etc etc. everything you cited.

But easy to configure? Hardly. Spending hours hand coding a fvwm2rc can be immensely satisfying, but it sure isn't easy especially to the new user.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[rifter]

Grub and Rifter have posted alternatives above, and I can also add blackbox to the list of suggestions regarding real usability and minimalism. ...

I know, I know... I have been trolled

Who cares if it was a troll? At least some informative comments were made of it, and it is indeed something a lot of new Linux users will want to know about. I know I have a few windowmanagers to play with now... :)

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[rifter]

I love fvwm. Used it for years (i use sawfish now just because I'm a huge lisp fan). I love fvwm's stability, flexibility, etc etc. everything you cited.

But easy to configure? Hardly. Spending hours hand coding a fvwm2rc can be immensely satisfying, but it sure isn't easy especially to the new user.

Well, it depends on what you want. Most of the fvwm2rc is pretty straightforward, though I would kill to find some decent documentation beyond the man page. The best route is not to start from scratch, but rather to take one that is close to what you want and then modify it. Mine is mostly based on the default one that came with Slackware with some modifications snagged from other fvwm2rcs I found online. There are a lot of webpages where people say "This is what fvwm looks like on my system and here is my fvwm2rc file." In addition some of them are very well commented and/or explain why they used things the way they did.

The main things I have changed myself are menu items and icons, which are dead simple to change, and I removed some crap I don't use. Of course, YMMV.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[dasunt]

Not sure about the other distributions, but Debian seems to have more window managers then you can shake a stick at.

But?

[JoeShmoe950]

Does it run linu.... oh

Re:But?

[Frymaster]

Does it run linu.... oh

i think you meant to say "does it run os/2?"

Re:But?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm sure he meant linux. Not only because this is /. , but because it's about IBM. I'm not a particular fan of big corps, but they didn't paint the sidewalks with "I love OS/2".

OS/2, just like AIX, are IBM products. Linux is an IBM strategy.

Many, many eons ago, in the early days of the PC, I read that IBM would seek to befriend with communities of developers. At that time, I simply could not understand what that meant (have in mind that Microsoft itself was a mere blip on the horizon). 1985? I don't know, memory fails me...

I don't know even if they (IBM) meant what is happening now; but they are actively trying it -- and being somewhat successful at that. I'd venture they aim for a role similar to O'Reilly's.

Oh, disclaimer: I could be completely wrong. Have a nice year... ;-)

Re:But?

[Aliencow]

Does OS/2 play ogg ?

Re:But?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Google.

Re:But?

[rifter]

" Does OS/2 play ogg ?"

Ask Google.

Nah, ask Hotbeef. :)

Re:But?

[RoadkillBunny]

Temporarily Unavailable
The Angelfire site you are trying to reach has been temporarily suspended due to excessive bandwidth consumption.

Did you know that it isn't safe to even to add link to a site where you have 5MG bradwidth on Slashdot, even in comments?

Re:But?

[Anonymous Coward]

My eyes are bleeding.

Re:But?

[Anonymous Coward]

That looks like a fucking ugly imitation of Space Moose.

Re:But?

[Anonymous Coward]

....yes

Access

[vpscolo]

Its nice to see that the chairman has made a stand but has also made sure that they will remain compatible to the rest of the business world. As much as we might all like Linux to survive in the business world we need to be able to speak what everyone else speaks. It might be good to have the moral high ground but its no good if you can't read your suppliers documents Rus

Re:Access

[airtim10]

I agree with this as much as we like to think that Linux will replace that other major operating system completely that probably won't happen anytime soon so we need to be able to do both becasue we may understand the great values of Linux but there are plenty of people out there who also understand the ease of learning and using that other operating system

Re:Access

[Dalcius]

I don't know about that. Not too many people will tell IBM to 'go take a hike' when IBM wants something in another format (that happens to be openly documented).

Documents that IBM exports are one thing, but for documents sent to IBM and internal stuff, what IBM says goes.

Re:Access

[Phillup]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"?

Even someone running Word can figure out how to open it...

Re:Access

[sentanta]

I used to work at company (a pretty big company with revenue of $1 bn +) that had IBM as its largest client, and we were compelled to use Lotus Notes, 123, Wordpro, and Freelance. Really very crappy programs, btw.

The point is that if a company of that size was compelled to use Lotus software, they are going to be forced to use Linux now.

We still did our spreadsheets in Excel, but there was a nifty VB macro floating around that converted to 123 without losing the formatting.

Re:Access

[DarkAce911]

I work at a company that has outsourced to IBM, they run all kinds of IBM software other than lotus. They were looking to go to Office 2003 as a standard, but don't want to have to pay extra to get there. They are happy with office 97 mostly.

IBM will turn some heads with Linix laptops running all of IBM apps.

Re:Access

[homebru]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"?

It isn't hard for most people. But a large chunk of IBM is made up of project managers, salesmen, middle-management and other such who don't know what "RTF" means and they are really concerned about that "F" and they don't want to expose their ignorance by asking someone who might know.

After all, someone once told them what "RTFM" means and "RTF" must be something similar but they don't have time to work it out themselves. They just barely have time to download the latest version of the 15Mb MSProject plan for the Blue Dollar project they're on before the afternoon meeting to discuss the revisions to the timeline which were proposed at the end of this morning's teleconference call.

Re:Access

[farnsworth]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"?

I've seen this argument and I've always thought that it makes sense. Until I tried to RTFify a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB. The resultant rtf was over 200 MB.

Lesson? A compressed, teplated, styled document format sometimes makes more sense than an inline marked up format. And if you are using Windows, what other format fits that bill besides .doc?

Re:Access

[bartwol]

"Not too many people will tell IBM to 'go take a hike' when IBM wants something in another format"

Ummm...you underestimate the supremecy of the customer, IBM's respect for that, and any good salesperson's inclination to bridge the gap to the next sale.

"You want to charge me $5 million for a mainframe by sending me a proposal that I can't read in Microsoft Office? Got take a hike!"

<bart

Re:Access

[Dalcius]

Notice I said "exported" materials are another matter. IBM as the customer and internal matters are a completely different story.

Cheers

Re:Access

[FauxPasIII]

> And if you are using Windows, what other
> format fits that bill besides .doc?

I think you mean 'If you're using MS Office'. OO.o runs on Windows fine.

Re:Access

[rifter]

"Not too many people will tell IBM to 'go take a hike' when IBM wants something in another format"

Ummm...you underestimate the supremecy of the customer, IBM's respect for that, and any good salesperson's inclination to bridge the gap to the next sale.

"You want to charge me $5 million for a mainframe by sending me a proposal that I can't read in Microsoft Office? Got take a hike!"

Last time I checked, text files were readable in MSWord, as were word documents and rtfs. PDF is also readable on Windows. Documents in all of these formats can be created with Linux applications. Most of them are open formats.

Re:Access

[__aatgod8309]

I wonder if Microsoft, the MPAA or the RIAA have heard of this 'supremacy of the customer' thing?

Re:Access

[bartwol]

Yeah...sorry...I missed it in my first read.

You called this one right.

<bart

Re:Access

[Feztaa]

And if you are using Windows, what other format fits that bill besides .doc?

XHTML/CSS seems to be able to do anything that word can do, and it has the added bonus of not being a tightly controlled proprietary format, jealously guarded by a detestable company.

Re:Access

[LinuxHam]

As much as we might all like Linux to survive in the business world we need to be able to speak what everyone else speaks

This is IBM. I still meet coworkers every few weeks who haven't gotten around to installing MS Office yet. They think SmartSuite (and Netscape) is still the corporate standard, and can't believe the company bought Office XP licenses for every employee about 18 months ago.

Re:Access

[autiger]

I used to work at company (a pretty big company with revenue of $1 bn +) that had IBM as its largest client, and we were compelled to use Lotus Notes, 123, Wordpro, and Freelance. Really very crappy programs, btw.

You're kidding right? This is just one of those 'it's different from Microsoft so it must be bad' kind of comments isn't it? The fact is that 123, WordPro, and Freelance have had features for years that are easier and better and are still unmatched by the Microsoft equivalent program.

Re:Access

[cyt0plas]

PDF? sxc? Sure people need openoffice to open it, but isn't that a good thing?

Re:Access

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an IBMer. I have hated MS and the products it produces for years. I have at times in my career been forced to use Office. That being said, Smartsuite makes me pine for MSOffice. Especially TurdPro. I can't even trust that thing to print without crashing.

Re:Access

[whatteaux]

I'm not too sure that this has ever been that big an issue for IBM. Internally, their standard 'office' software is Lotus SmartSuite. An IBMer must get special permission from their general manager if they want MS Office installed (well, they did hwen I was there up to 18 months ago). SmartSuite can easily read & write MS office format documents (better than OpenOffice can) even if the reverse isn't true.

So perhaps they're going to port Lotus WordPro, Freelance, 1-2-3, etc, to Linux. In the past, when IBM's standard desktop was OS/2, they had native versions of those products (and Notes), so it shouldn't be too hard.

Re:Access

[swillden]

"You want to charge me $5 million for a mainframe by sending me a proposal that I can't read in Microsoft Office? Got take a hike!"

I am an IBMer, and I do send proposals to customers and they are *not* sent in Office format. Company policy is that proposals (since they're legal documents, even if they may or may not be "signable") are never sent to a customer in an editable format. The preferred format is printed paper, but PDF is often used.

That said, though your example is bad, your point is valid: We do exchange documents with clients, and Office formats are the ones most commonly used because Office is what everyone has. OpenOffice.org can work around most of these issues, but there are documents it doesn't handle. It will be interesting to see how that issue is addressed, assuming this is for real.

Re:Access

[Anonymous Coward]

a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB.

Kind of says it all. Given that the actual text in a "medium sized" (100 page) document is only around 300K, maybe, just maybe, the bloat isn't due to the RTF format.

Re:Access

[Tassleman]

Personally, I prefer PDF. It's widely compatible across multiple platforms, it has some protection options that do every well, and there are solutions that you can pay for or download for free. We use Acrobat Writer on probably 50% of our users machines now, and they all love it for sending files out to clients. Before we were using PDFs we occasionally had to convert a document to another format to send it to another company.

I don't think I've had more than two or three requests in the last year and a half since we're made the move. For one of those requests I talked to the other companies IS team (which as sometimes happens, is 1 well meaning guy that's going to Tech School or something and doesn't know it all yet) and told him about programs he could use to read the PDFs if he was interested, he was quite pleased.

Re:Access

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sure people need openoffice to open it, but isn't that a good thing?

Only if you don't mind them not reading it because they don't feel like installing a huge program just to view your one document. Besides, like the average user has any clue what sxc or OpenOffice is.

Re:Access

[Knetzar]

OpenOffice can export into pdf files, I'm sure they'd train sales people to send those.

Re:Access

[forgotmypassword]

I tried to RTFify a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB. The resultant rtf was over 200 MB.

Lesson? A compressed, teplated, styled document format sometimes makes more sense than an inline marked up format.

Dude, I'm pretty sure the lesson was supposed to be that Microsoft Word is a big pile of shit.

Chances are good that Word put tons of unseen garbage in the RTF file so that it could be reconverted to a DOC file and retain all of its original formating. I know Word does this with other formats because I've seen it.

It's probably the combination of that and , well , if you have ever seen the HTML it produces it will have tons of lines that look like this "foo <B></B> bar" for no apparent reason.

Re:Access

[AYeomans]

What's wrong with LIST3820 format ? (:-)

Re:Access

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably mean sxw. sxc is the OOo spreadsheet format.

Re:Access

[NighthawkFoo]

That's what happens when you have 300,000 employees worldwide, some (vastly) more technical than others.

Unless they're beaten over the head with a clue bat, many IBMers just keep on doing their jobs and ignore much of the internal application "churn". They've seen so many different virtual office environments (PROFS, OfficeVision, Lotus...) that they can be excused for being somewhat jaded.

Re:Access

[mangu]

a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB.

Well, the King James Bible in .txt format is 5MB. I would hardly call that "medium sized".

Lesson? ms-word is a huge piece of bloat.

Re:Access

[Anonymous Coward]

It happens when you save a document that contains images -- MSWord (at least MSWORD 2000) stores them uncompressed in .RTF

Such a pity. Usually I like .RTF, but when I have to deal with images inside documents, only PDF is my friend.

Re:Access

[shaka999]

Yeah, and we all know how many graphs and pictures are present in the Bible.

What a silly argument....

Re:Access

[rjamestaylor]

Silly, silly. IBM dictates what its vendors will use to interchange data and documents with it. Do you think Walmart cares one bit that it requires any vendore working with it to use EDI? Since, oh, 1990 as I recall. IBM requisition manager: "I'm sorry but you sent your proposal in MS WorDRM 2005, which we can't open. We went with your competitor who used Vim 6.2 to prepare their proposal, per our RFP. LoveYaGottaGoBuhBye."

Re:Access

[Unipuma]

For a project at work, I've been involved with changing a module that generated Word-DOC documents into code that delivered RTF.
The first step was to have Word convert it's own documents to see what happens, and Word does the same here as what FrontPage was famous for as well: Loads of markup code that isn't used (putting font code around an image, for example).
The most anoying part is that any in-document image is stored twice in Word-RTF. Once in hex-code, and once more in WMF-format. The latter will usually be 8 to 10 times the size of the hex-code representation, and can safely be removed. Word will still show your image normally... but should you save the document, it'd generate the WMF file inline again.

The code I wrote generated styled resumees, and the average document size went down from 150kb to around 10kb by switching to RTF. Opening and saving the file again in RTF with Word would bloat the file up to 2MB.

So, yes, RTF can be used to make styled documents the same as Word, and the document will actually be smaller, but don't let Word generate those documents for you. It'll bloat then.

Re:Access

[Chris Burke]

What? Microsoft implement conversion to a non-proprietary and/or non-MS format in such a shoddy manner that it makes their own format look pristine and wonderful and the other formats bulky and bloated?

I'm shocked. Why would they do that?

Re:Access

[Tin Foil Hat]

You can read nearly every MS document out there using OOo or Abiword or any of a dozen other open source office applications. Although it's true that some of the formatting may be messed up, you can still read it. And who says you have to send a word doc back in response? Save it to a more interoperable format (which probably looks better under OSS) and send that. Their MS Office app will be able to handle it fine. It also sends a subtle message that interoperability is appreciated.

Re:Access

[EnderWiggnz]

define "huge"?

hard drives are cheap these days...

Hmm ...

[tcgwebs]

Interesting, but I wonder who it was that leaked the info? I'd sure hate to be that person :) Anyway, I'm glad that Linux is actually being recognized by large companies such as IBM as an option for this.

Re:Hmm ...

[KrispyKringle]

Considering that IBM is one of the strongest supporters of enterprise Linux (offering it on many servers and mainframes), it's not surprising that they've recognized Linux as an option. And unlike, say, Sun, IBM doesn't have any real desktop offerings of their own with which Linux on the desktop would be competing (I strongly doubt they were considering using OS/2 :P), so it makes sense that they would have gone this direction.

Probably the big reason they wouldn't be interesting in flaunting it so much is that their workstation offerings are far more limited than Sun's, who has made a big effort to show that they are ``with it'' when it comes to Linux on the desktop (even if they continue to adamantly support Solaris as a server OS).

But I don't know. Just seems to be like that.

Re:Hmm ...

[GAVollink]

I worked at a phone company called US-West about 5 years ago, and they had over 1600 desktops running Linux as primary ... way back then. They used Citrix servers to get to that "compatible stuff"... well, MS Office. It certainly wasn't all desktops but it was certainly a nice chunk. IBM isn't the first to take Linux seriously as a cost effective option for productivity.

Re:Hmm ...

[w42w42]

I suspect that a large part of this is to show prospective customers that there are alternatives to Windows. Kind of a proverbial 'walk the walk'.

In addition, any clients or customers that they can convince to use Linux vs. Windows will be clients/customers that are unlikely to purchase other msft software.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall, to see what the real intentions are.

Re:Hmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that a large part of this is to show prospective customers that there are alternatives to Windows.

Yeah. Just like os/2. Are they switching from Windows in the first place?

Re:Hmm ...

[baomike]

With Qwest ne US West I think the Operative word
for Linux adoption is CHEAP.
With US West it didn't matter if it worked , if it was cheap.

US West customer.

Flame Retardent: I am actualy a long time Linux fan
since 386BSD fell apart.
(FVWM2 on Slackware)

Re:Hmm ...

[Phroggy]

Interesting! Anyone know if this is still the case at Qwest?

Re:Hmm ...

[LinuxHam]

IBM isn't the first to take Linux seriously as a cost effective option for productivity.

True, but IBM has about 350,000 employees. And we are "the Linux company"... well, about as much as its possible to be one. The potential for cost savings are equal to the GDP of a small country. IBM, like most large companies, publishes standardized desktop images for various types of equipment and job roles. There have been standard Linux desktop images for years. I'm just glad to hear that IBM is getting behind Linux on the desktop and going after the cost savings.

Its better than cutting staff.

Re:Hmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition, any clients or customers that they can convince to use Linux vs. Windows will be clients/customers that are unlikely to purchase other msft software.

DING-DING-DING! I think we have a winner!

MS is a competitor of IBM in many product areas. Getting customers off of Windows makes a future switch from IBM products to some MS-solution much more expensive.

Re:Hmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for IBM and the fact that IBM is moving whole hog to Linux has not exactly been kept a secret within the company. Hell, I had two or three people forward a note talking about it to me last month.

Re:Hmm ...

[Chicks_Hate_Me]

No clue, I'll make sure to ask when I have to call into the ILEC ;)

Dear Slashdot editor..

[msimm]

Good quote!

WHAT TO EAT TONIGHT???

[RecipeTroll]

PORK AND NEW MEXICAN CHILE SAUCE

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 1 1/4 hr

2 lb boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes
3 oz dried mild red New Mexican chile pods (10 to 12)
4 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon garlic powder
3 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Accompaniments: refried beans and cooked white rice

Preheat oven to 375F.

Roast pork in a 2 1/2- to 3-quart shallow baking dish, uncovered, in middle of oven, stirring occasionally, 30 minutes.

While pork is roasting, soak chiles in a bowl in just enough boiling-hot water to cover until softened, about 20 minutes. Drain chiles, discarding soaking water and stems.

Puree chiles, garlic cloves, garlic powder, 3 cups water, and salt in a blender until smooth. Stir sauce into pork and bake, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until pork is tender, about 45 minutes.

Cooks' note:
Carne adovada can be made 2 days ahead and cooled, uncovered, then chilled, covered.

Makes 6 main-course servings.

Re:WHAT TO EAT TONIGHT???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, where's the garlic salt?

Re:WHAT TO EAT TONIGHT???

[AoT]

next time make it veggie please!

Hey SCO!

[cartzworth]

*danza slap*

Only makes sense

[kjd]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design. They've got the ability to tailor-design an OS to the needs of their company and deploy it enterprise-wide, and with Linux and friends, do it without losing much cross-platform compatibility.

A similar switch might be tougher for other large organizations with widescale Windows deployments, where a few lightly-customized Win2k images might be the most they can currently support.

They'll come around eventually...

Re:Only makes sense

[memmel2]

At a business level IBM is like a lot of other companies. So once they do it for themselves they will be in a prime position to resale the experience to there own customers. Not only do they get Linux for free but they stand to make a lot of money off this.

IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

hopefully they will never turn evil again. the future is collaberation, maybe they realize that. why pass up tonnes of free leighbour?

just think in 10 years windows might be the os/2 of today

Re:IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

In 10 years, IBM might be the Microsoft of today. Just like Microsoft is the IBM of a while ago.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer -- with new Paranoia Information Manager!

Re:IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Comic book guy says:

Funniest.. misspelling... ever!

Re:IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

I gather you haven't heard of "layboar" yet.

Or "coallubborayshen"...

Turn around.

[irokitt]

Yes, in about 20 years big blue has changed from the evil empire (with some saying it was beeing challenged by upstart Microsoft-although I never would have thought) to a worthy comrade in open-source armor. Way to go, IBM, for taking the final plunge.

Re:Turn around.

[mhesseltine]

Yes, in about 20 years big blue has changed from the evil empire (with some saying it was beeing challenged by upstart Microsoft-although I never would have thought) to a worthy comrade in open-source armor. Way to go, IBM, for taking the final plunge.

Yes, but realize that IBM has been around since about 1914, that they have been the "bad guy" before, and just because they are supporting open source now doesn't mean that they couldn't find a way to exploit it for their own selfish good later.

Again, glad they're supporting open-source software, but I wonder how much of their support is in recognition of the value of open-source, and how much is just to spite Microsoft?

Re:Turn around.

[jnana]

I'm sure they, like every other (for-profit) corporation out there are not doing it out of altruism, but that they are doing it is the important thing. They are probably doing it mostly because it makes sense to them business-wise -- both because of cost savings and because of the example it sets for other companies to follow (in which case the IBM consultants will be sitting there waiting to sell them services and extras) -- and perhaps to spite microsoft too, but that again is in their business interest.

Re:Turn around.

[dedazo]

It's so funny how everyone here cheers IBM like this because they're "sticking it to teh M$". Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

Re:Turn around.

[chill]

It's so funny how everyone here cheers IBM like this because they're "sticking it to teh M$". Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

Most major closed-source software projects contain large chunks of code licensed from other people. It is quite possible that good portions of DB2 and Notes are licensed from others.

The cost of a code audit on something like that can be enormous. Google for Bruce Perens' comments about when HP let OpenMail go -- and why he advised *against* open sourcing it.

Supporting open source and maximizing shareholder value aren't mutually exclusive. IBM is a very large services organization. They can and do make quite a bit of profit supporting other people's stuff.

-Charles Hill

Re:Turn around.

[jc42]

... glad they're supporting open-source software, but I wonder how much of their support is in recognition of the value of open-source, and how much is just to spite Microsoft?

Well, 20 years ago I worked for several employers that had a big IBM mainframe (and minis were just coming in). What did the mainframe run? It ran VM, of course, plus whatever subsystems the various departments liked.

And where did VM come from? Uh, it was developed in academia. It was an open-source project from the start, though the term hadn't been invented then. IBM tried to downplay it for a few years, and then embraced it as they realized it was a Good Thing for everyone.

VM came with full source (I saw a fair amount of it), and there wasn't any problem showing it to people. IBM supported it, and they also happily accepted bug fixes from anyone.

I was in the engineering department, and one day we brought in Amdahl's version of unix that ran on VM. We joked about installing it over the dead bodies of a lot of IBMers. But the IBM reps themselves didn't have a problem with it. They were curious, and several wished they could supply something so useful. The "dead IBMer bodies" were the local people who thought that IBM was a religion and we'd invited in a devil. The actual IBM employees thought these people were stupid. Their attitude was more like "If it help customers use our machines, we're all for it."

In fact, IBM has long supplied software like VM that they didn't develop. Having lots o useful apps has always been a good tool for selling the hardware. And they have long supported at least some non-IBM software, because much of their income comes from support contracts.

IBM has long been a mixed pack of very good guys and very bad guys, with a lot of people ethically in the middle. Like any other giant monopolistic corporation.

Re:Turn around.

[burns210]

but IBM has always been a hardware company... Why did they seek out, and then license the OS to their early PC(a contract Microsoft got with DOS, which they didn't own at the time, and leas to the Windows monopoly today)? They use software to sell hardware. They develop software to make money, yes, but that comes second to their hardware business(the same approach that Apple takes, by the way, only IBM is grossly more diversified)....

when IBM goes 100% linux, which they will, it is just a matter of when, you can bet to see oodles of code from what they have collected in their multiple operating systems(the mainframe OSes that are able to run linux, thanks to the porting project) and all their applications in one form or another will also be ported to linux.

What, you think IBM will back linux with billions of dollars and not use it themselves? And you think they will use it themselves but not bring along Notes, that they so heavily depend upon in Windows? No, they will migrate to linux, and they will bring all their internal and external software with them. :)

Re:Turn around.

[dedazo]

I understand that. And I don't think IBM should let DB2 or any of their core products go. My point was that everyone is falling over themselves to praise IBM as if they were the FSF 2.0; out to promote and improve free software. I don't think that's the case. They are out to make a buck. Nothing wrong with that, and they do it better than most companies.

But they are using Linux as a tool to make more money. No more, no less. They don't have a viable desktop OS (I won't count Warp since they killed it themselves with amazing efficiency), so Linux fits the bill. They could have just as well gone with one of the *BSDs as Apple did.

People need to understand that instead of thinking IBM is suddenly Protector Of Our Software Rights. That's not in their corporate charter, trust me.

Re:Turn around.

[burns210]

yes, IBM supports linux because it makes them money. IBM is a hardware and service company, they sell hardware and support contracts as their primary income. if linux is free to sell, then they don't have to take a chunk os a $1,000 dollar sale and give $100 of it away to Microsoft, they keep all $1,000 for themselves. That is fine by me.

Re:Turn around.

[LauraW]

Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?

No, thank goodness. If the Notes source code is anything like the Notes UI, I'd have to gouge my eyes out after seeing it. That is, if it didn't make me go blind on its own.

Re:Turn around.

[dedazo]

Why did they seek out, and then license the OS to their early PC(a contract Microsoft got with DOS, which they didn't own at the time, and leas to the Windows monopoly today)?

True. But while this is a oft-used argument, also remember that they released OS/2 (which was a damn fine operating system) and then they proceeded to ignore it until it died because they couldn't make up their minds as to whether they were a hardware, software or services company. They had a huge installed base, even compared to Windows. It was certainly larger than MacOS at the time.

And you think they will use it themselves but not bring along Notes, that they so heavily depend upon in Windows? No, they will migrate to linux, and they will bring all their internal and external software with them.

My point is that I'd rather wait and see. Companies change directions, they change CEOs and boards and reinvent themselves. And as SCO has proven, companies can also make life difficult for everyone, stupid and baseless as their claims might be.

Re:Turn around.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

and perhaps to spite microsoft too, but that again is in their business interest.

As it should be. Remember, Socialism and Communism are nice ideas on paper that have never worked in the Real World. It seems to be a problem with human nature.

Re:Turn around.

[jnana]

I only meant that they staked a good part of their future on the success of things that Microsoft has staked its future on the failure of, so anything that causes Microsoft trouble, directly or indirectly, benefits IBM.

Re:Turn around.

[swb]

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

A human's main reason for existence is reproduction and survival. Does that mean that all humans are alike, or is it OK to support some of them (eg, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, $altruistic_leader) and not support others (Hitler, Stalin, $murderous_dictators)?

I think its still OK to support IBM in this endeavor, even if in reality its about a group of powerful rich guys figuring out how to get more rich and powerful; the byproduct of that activity (a good, business-friendly linux desktop) is likely to be of some benefit to everyone given the structure and nature of Linux, particularly based on the way IBM has support Linux to this point.

It's not 100% get IBM shareholders rich and fuck everyone else, it's 100% get IBM shareholders rich and put some of the IBM code back to the community. It's a meaningful distinction.

Re:Turn around.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Sorry. Point well taken. Many Slashdotters have issues with "big business" and I understand that. Big business, indeed most public traded companies, are back stabbing "I Got Mine" organizations. Goes without saying in most cases.

Re:Turn around.

[AJWM]

one day we brought in Amdahl's version of unix that ran on VM.

Ah yes, UTS. I supported a system on that on a partition of the campus 3090 for a year or so when I worked at U Guelph. (Originally developed the software on BSD on a PDP-11). A few minor quirks but overall solid -- although it felt strange to be running ASCII-based software on EBCDIC-loving hardware ;-)

You're right about IBM's attitude -- at the moment I'm working (contractor) for IBM as a Solaris sysadmin with a roomful of mostly Sun boxes. (It's an IBM services customer site -- there's also some big IBM iron in another room.)

Re:Turn around.

[Feztaa]

Yes, in about 20 years big blue has changed from the evil empire (with some saying it was beeing challenged by upstart Microsoft

When I read the history books, it looks a lot like IBM passed the "Evil Empire" baton to Microsoft, as if they were in some kind of relay race or something. Once MS tricked IBM into licensing DOS instead of outright buying it, Microsoft officially became evil and IBM officially stopped being evil.

Re:Turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes
>lately?

I haven't seen the source code to Notes, but I have seen DB2 (but not recently, it was in 1990.) A certain oil exploration had a source license together with a whole bunch of other agreements with big blue. I was the librarian who dealt with documentation and code storage. This was also my first experience with optical disc storage. They were experimenting with Notes, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone had source.

It was all very cool, even though I was a nobody a the company. I get the last laugh though. Lots of the people I worked with ended up at Enron.

Re:Turn around.

[Teflik]

I don't think that people are falling all overthemselves for IBM: The slashdot articles concludes with, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend?" and the First Post says "The enemy of my enemy is.. useful."

I just don't see any grand delusions going on here.

In this one instance, IBM's goals happen to be compatible with my (our?) goals of promoting free software. If our goals happen to be compatible (even if for totally different reasons) then, hey... rock on. (for now, anyway...)

Re:Turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so funny how everyone here cheers IBM like this because they're "sticking it to teh M$".

Where can I order a set of Reality Twister Glasses too? 90% thought this topic and maybe one poster above a 2 mod mentioned anything like this. But then, "we" all "know" what Slashdot "everyones" are like, right?

Re:Turn around.

[HoldenCaulfield]

I thought it was amusing that people thought they were sticking it to MS because they already do - when I had a co-op with them, none of their machines ran office - we all got to use the Lotus office suite . . .

Re:Turn around.

[vegetasaiyajin]

Remember, Socialism and Communism are nice ideas on paper that have never worked in the Real World.

Wrong. Socialism is a bad idea. Communism isn't even implementable in real life. The only possible implementation of communism is a form of socialism that is even worse than the original.
If they were good ideas they would have worked in practice.
Capitalism is a good idea because it can work in practice (at least the approximation to real capitalsim that is implementable). Many mixed economies approaches are good ideas and the fact that they have been seuccessfully implemented is a proof.

Re:Turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen the source to OS X lately (no, Darwin doesn't count). Seen the source to Winamp or Photoshop? Funny how the slashdot community cheers companies like Adobe and Apple when they release "cool" closed source software, but if IBM attempts to do the same thing, they are "evil".

Re:Turn around.

[Cajun Hell]

This really isn't surprising. Using Free Software and developing Open Source software are not necessarily acts of altruism. They are acts of self-interest. They are exactly the kinds of things that a profit-making company operating under capitalism should do, to maximize its gain.

The question is: when is Microsoft going to start doing it? Eating their own dog food is good for their egos, but not so good for their internal productivity and infrastructure resilience. Maybe using Linux internally could turn out to be the boost Microsoft needs in order to improve Windows.

Re:Turn around.

[slashdot_commentator]

Wrong. Socialism is a bad idea. Communism isn't even implementable in real life. The only possible implementation of communism is a form of socialism that is even worse than the original. If they were good ideas they would have worked in practice.

And *why* is socialism a bad idea? Don't hear much complaints about it from the Swedes. Oh, what's that, Sweden doesn't exist, its not in the Real World? Communism is merely supposed to be a transitional gov't state to Anarchistic gov't. (Which does not mean anarchy, BTW.) If its not moving to local gov't collectives, its not Communism. Don't mistake ideological perversion as Communism. Even that distorted Communism you accuse as unworkable hasn't disappeared in Cuba, and in fact, results in more infants surviving than in the USA.

Communism (as in USSR & China) didn't survive into this century, not because its an unworkable form of gov't, but because it focused on trying to militarily compete with the Western (capitalist) nations. A more conscientious ruling elite probably would have resulted in the USSR's survival. If Communism is unworkable, how can Cuba still be communist, even with the demise of its benefactor?

Capitalism is a good idea because it can work in practice (at least the approximation to real capitalsim that is implementable). Many mixed economies approaches are good ideas and the fact that they have been seuccessfully implemented is a proof.

Totalitarianism (or monarchy), by your rule, must also be a good idea, because it can work in practice. Why, some Totalitarian gov'ts (like historical China) have lasted centuries! And totalitarian gov'ts exist to this very day.

Capitalism is an efficient system for resource distribution, but it hardly makes it an ideal economic system. After all, what's superior about a system that favors wealth aggregation, at the expense of talented individuals who don't happen to be born into a wealthy family? What's superior about an economic system that can throw money at legislators to favor their economic status at the expense of the "common" folk?

Re:Turn around.

[file-exists-p]

One can think IBM is "good" from a behaviorist point of view, even if the behavior is motivated not by ethic but by pragmatism (in that case, as far as I understand, IBM makes money selling hardware, not software, and preferes by far to rely on open-source which provides them with an incredible freedom).

My only concern in that context is the X-Box like hardwares which refuse to run non-signed softwares. With such schemes, IBM could just profit from open-source without giving back anything.

--
Go Debian!!!

Re:Turn around.

[calica]

But think about it. IBM is learning from its mistakes. Sometime Pre-1980 IBM decided they didn't want to maintain an OS for a volume play. The result, IBM PC and Microsoft. The PC became an ocean of clones and Bill Gates, Neptune. IBM retreated into the highend. Now, the clones are approaching the highend.

Now, IBM is aligning itself with a free os hoping to eliminate that type of market domination. Meanwhile, IBM Global Services, can make a fortune in consulting fees, and eliminating R/D for OS on their highend.

Re:Turn around.

[NighthawkFoo]

So *that's* why my vision's been getting worse lately...

Re:Turn around.

[vegetasaiyajin]

And *why* is socialism a bad idea? Don't hear much complaints about it from the Swedes. Oh, what's that, Sweden doesn't exist, its not in the Real World? Communism is merely supposed to be a transitional gov't state to Anarchistic gov't. (Which does not mean anarchy, BTW.) If its not moving to local gov't collectives, its not Communism. Don't mistake ideological perversion as Communism. Even that distorted Communism you accuse as unworkable hasn't disappeared in Cuba, and in fact, results in more infants surviving than in the USA.

There is no socialism in Sweden. In Sweden there is a mixed economy. If there were socialism, the means of production would be in the hands of the state. That is, there would be no private property. e.g. You wouldn't be able to buy ericsson shares in the stock market. You wouldn't even have a stock market.
Sweden is a perfect example of a successful mixed economy.
In Sweden your house is yours, your work capacity is yours. You pay a lot of taxes, but, I repeat, it is not socialism.
In practice, socialism (and communism) can only be applied by force because it implies the abolition of private property.
Regarding Cuba, You have no idea of how people live in Cuba. In Cuba you can't go to a supermarket and buy food. You get the food the government thinks you need. Then they only get one chicken a month. The practically do not know what beef is (the government gives them some crap called carnic paste). In Cuba, for a few dollars you can have all the sex you want, because many girls there are desperate. Fidel once said that cuban jineteras (cuban name for hookers) are the only ones with university titles. The sad part is that it is true.
I have friends who have visited Cuba and they tell me it was very sad what they saw. My friends gave away all the toothpaste, toilet paper, soap, underware and other things they had left to the hotel employees because they have very limited or no access to those products.
OK, the communist regime still exists, but that is only because it is a dictatorship where the goverment has all the military power.
Why do you think so many Cubans take the risk of being eaten by sharks to escape Cuba and go to Florida in self-made rafts?

Communism (as in USSR & China) didn't survive into this century, not because its an unworkable form of gov't, but because it focused on trying to militarily compete with the Western (capitalist) nations. A more conscientious ruling elite probably would have resulted in the USSR's survival. If Communism is unworkable, how can Cuba still be communist, even with the demise of its benefactor?
Communism (as defiend by Marx) is a form of government where there is no state (and therefore no government, no courts, etc.). It is a state of utopia. It is unimplementable in practice. In practice what you have is a government that owns everything (including you capacity to work) and distributes wealth to each according to its need.
For more information con communism read this Totalitarianism (or monarchy), by your rule, must also be a good idea, because it can work in practice. Why, some Totalitarian gov'ts (like historical China) have lasted centuries! And totalitarian gov'ts exist to this very day. I think I did not explain myself clearly. When I say an idea works in practice I mean it works well in practice. That is, the people live decent lives and are happy with the government. You can study, and if you are willing to work it is not very difficult to find a job, and if you have a job you can eat well and you can feed your children welland give them good education. You can have a place to live. You can have a car. You can expect reasonable levels of public security. Totalitarian systems can last because they own the military power and nobody can oppose them. That does not mean the people living there are happy with the government. I live in a neo-fascist quasi-totalita

Re:Turn around.

[jsavit]

There are some mistakes in the parent post: VM was not developed in academia, it was originally developed by IBM at IBM labs in Cambridge Massachusetts (not Cambridge University - hence the common confusion about who created VM), and later in Kingston and Endicott, New York.

Also, while it was distributed in source format for years, it was not "open source" as it we now describe it. An active user community distributed enhancements to VM, but the OS belonged to IBM at all times. Unfortunately, in 1983 IBM introduced a policy called "Object Code Only" (OCO) that planned to remove all source code. The VM user community fought hard against this, and managed to (mostly) retract this policy for the VM OS itself. It's should be noted that IBM is most fond, to this day, of open-sourcing other people's OSes, not their own (you don't get source to z/OS, DB2, etc, and it's not because it contains other people's intellectual property)

IBM did have a version of Unix for mainframes, like UTS: it was called AIX/ESA, and for better or worse it never went anywhere.

Re:Turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most major closed-source software projects contain large chunks of code licensed from other people. It is quite possible that good portions of DB2 and Notes are licensed from others.

Exactly. If IBM can put together a desktop without including those kind of licensed chunks, they cut the cost of licensing from the desktop. If they can replace SmartSuite with OpenOffice they lose the cost of those hunks of SmartSuite that don't belong to them. Same for all the other infrastructure segments that come with a Linux desktop. Why pay if you don't have to?

If IBM succeeds, people will eventually pay IBM to show them how to eliminate the cost of infrastructure software licensing. They would eventually figure it out themselves, but IBM has found a way to profit from the end of the proprietary model.

Of course there will be proprietary software as long as it's legal to make it, but it's fairly obvious that open source has the potential to kill any proprietary software market, if enough people get interested in pooling their intellectual capital. IBM Gets It. They are moving away from producing closed-source software in markets where credible open-source alternatives exist, just because it's a losing battle. They also see that there will always be someone who wants to pay an expert to do it, rather than do it themselves. That's where the OS money is, and IBM Gets That Too.

Re:Turn around.

[slashdot_commentator]

In practice, socialism (and communism) can only be applied by force because it implies the abolition of private property. Regarding Cuba, You have no idea of how people live in Cuba.

Yes, I am aware of these details. But the definition of a sucessful political/economic system is not how may luxury items each person can get access to. As far as I am aware, there is no starvation going on in Cuba, and every citizen can get medical care (unlike the US). Cuba was always a poor country (unless you were a mobster or gov't official), and its too small to possess cattle ranches. That doesn't mean its proof that communism doesn't work. It could be a matter working in a bad situation, or the result of economic embargo by the capitalist US.

OK, the communist regime still exists, but that is only because it is a dictatorship where the goverment has all the military power.

That is only your contention. Dictatorships exist because they are supported (or at least not overthrown) by a majority of its people. Capitalism is rife with corruption, and there is not much difference between a few rich people imprisoning people for being enemies of the state, and a dictatorship imprisoning people for being enemies of the state. Hell, there are Iraqis saying they were better off under Saddam because at least they had electricity, A/C, food markets, and *safety*.

Why do you think so many Cubans take the risk of being eaten by sharks to escape Cuba and go to Florida in self-made rafts?

Because they have rich relatives in Cuba? Because they can get more luxury items in the US. (again, not proof that US capitalism is a superior economic system.) If capitalism is so sucessful, why aren't they taking those boats to Mexico? After all, its a capitalist country, and has the built-in advantage of having the same native tongue.

Communism (as defiend by Marx) is a form of government where there is no state (and therefore no government, no courts, etc.). It is a state of utopia. It is unimplementable in practice.

Anarchism is that state of "utopia". It is not unimplementable in practice because of flawed theory, its unimplementable because currently there are fascist nations that actively prevent anarchism from evolving. Communism is a transition system that is supposed to combat and dissolve those fascist threats to anarchism. You can argue that communism/anarchism in theory is flawed, because it cannot outcompete a capitalist system (because greed (profit motive) makes capitalism a more efficient resource distributor), therefore can't aggregate enough power to defend itself from a capitalist system. But that does not make communism/anarchism unworkable or inferior. The question is what is preferable, people who get the same allocation of resources and a system that discourages exploitation of others, or talented and fortunately positioned people permitted more accumulation of resources at the expense of talented and less fortunately positioned people.

What you describe is not capitalism.

Look, either you accept that economic systems are a reflection of its political systems, or that there is no way to evaluate the merits of an economic system using real world examples. You can't point to historical examples of communism and say its proof its theory is flawed, and yet claim any obvious historical examples of flaws in capitalism is irrelevant, because its inconsistent to its theory.

Re:Turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any company has to be concerned about its bottom line.

IBM was burned by its own mistake on MS-DOS and not owning the PC software OS. They have been looking for an opportunity to correct that - and rightly found Linux to be what will achieve that. When they discovered that, they appear to have made strategic (long term) plans to support it, so eventually (10-15-20 years from hence), Linux will rule, rather than a proprietary OS. Companies can still make money with hardware, support and applications etc., but not the OS itself, which should be considered INFRASTRUCTURE for any nation. MS seems to be blind to this fact (was, at least).

Gandhi said "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" - we are in the last 2 stages now.

Re:Turn around.

[ckaminski]

While OS/2 had gumption, god bless it, it didn't have the staying power to compete in the market. Developers didn't want to touch it. OS2 didn't help it by making it easier to run windows apps in a more stable environment than on windows itself.

Where Linux differs is that it's posix compatibility and X environment already brought it lots of applications. Cost of entry to developers is low low low. Whether or not IBM does Linux on the Desktop has no negative impact on Linux on the Desktop. Linux will eventually make it there on its own accord. IBM can't ignore this into the ground.

Granted, there's some PR mindshare that some IBM missteps could hurt the overall Linux movement, but truly, as Linux keeps getting better and better, and more reliable, no amount of bad press by corporations like IBM is going to hurt it. It will win on it's virtues.

Your argument has virtue, don't get me wrong. There's concern to be had if you're a true "Linux is the One True OS" type, like I'm starting to be.
Ask yourself this: How has the SCO case hurt your ability to use Linux TODAY? FUD and PR are just that to the community. The rest of the world will be convinced by numbers and deeds like what IBM is doing. In a year when IBM sales reps start showing up at offices with SuSE preloaded on laptops with the newest whizbang apps installed, running OOo Impress, PHB mindshare will change.

And we have no choice but to wait and see, and continue supporting our OS and packages of choice. :-)

Cheers,
-Chris

Re:Turn around.

[irokitt]

My Dad, involved with computers at the time, always thought Microsoft had stuck it to IBM by licensing DOS-and that in doing so Microsoft was challenging status quo. That opinion began to disappear when he became an early adopter of Win95 and got burned for it.

Re:Turn around.

[vegetasaiyajin]

Yes, I am aware of these details. But the definition of a sucessful political/economic system is not how may luxury items each person can get access to. As far as I am aware, there is no starvation going on in Cuba, and every citizen can get medical care (unlike the US). Cuba was always a poor country (unless you were a mobster or gov't official), and its too small to possess cattle ranches. That doesn't mean its proof that communism doesn't work. It could be a matter working in a bad situation, or the result of economic embargo by the capitalist US.
yeah, sure... All I can tell you is that the average person in other similar latin american countries lives much better than almost everyone in Cuba (except for members of the government and a very few others).

That is only your contention. Dictatorships exist because they are supported (or at least not overthrown) by a majority of its people.
You are so wrong. Dictatorships exist because they have all the military power in a country. The only way to overthrow a dictatorship is through force. There is no way people without weapons can overthrow a dictatorship.

Capitalism is rife with corruption
Most economies in the world are mixed economies, where the power of the state varies. Corruption comes because of statism. It is not the fault of capitalism. Corruption can be reduced with appropriate laws.

Because they have rich relatives in Cuba? Because they can get more luxury items in the US. (again, not proof that US capitalism is a superior economic system.) If capitalism is so sucessful, why aren't they taking those boats to Mexico? After all, its a capitalist country, and has the built-in advantage of having the same native tongue.
Mexico is also a mixed economy with much more corruption than in the USA. They go to Miami because they can live better there than in Mexico and it is easier for them to legally stay in USA. If they go to mexico they would live much better than in Cuba.
Mexican people live much much better than Cuban people.
A lot of cuban people is coming to my country (because our current government wants to implement a political system similar to Cuba's) and most do not want to go back, and Venezuelan people is currently among the poorest in latin america (in particular, we are poorer than mexicans).

Anarchism is that state of "utopia". It is not unimplementable in practice because of flawed theory, its unimplementable because currently there are fascist nations that actively prevent anarchism from evolving. Communism is a transition system that is supposed to combat and dissolve those fascist threats to anarchism.
You have no idea of what fascism is, do you?. I live in a fascist state which is trying to implement communism.

You can argue that communism/anarchism in theory is flawed, because it cannot outcompete a capitalist system (because greed (profit motive) makes capitalism a more efficient resource distributor), therefore can't aggregate enough power to defend itself from a capitalist system.
communism/anarchism is flawed at least in the current state of mankind.
Communism requires everyone to be a saint, but not only that, it also requires everyone to agree with everyone else's concept of "needs" so that everyone receives wealth according to their "needs". I do not see how my view of what you need is the same of what you think you need.

But that does not make communism/anarchism unworkable or inferior. The question is what is preferable, people who get the same allocation of resources and a system that discourages exploitation of others, or talented and fortunately positioned people permitted more accumulation of resources at the expense of talented and less fortunately positioned people.
One of the problems with communism is that it considers wealth as something that exists and has to be distributed. You say accumulation of resources as if they previously existed and were acumu

Re:Turn around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply untrue, VM was, and is an internal IBM development

Re:Turn around.

[burns210]

A second helpful thing on your POSIX compliance is that (virtually) all 'mainstream' operating systems outside of windows are posix compliant... *bsd, darwin(os x), linux, aix, solaris... the many corporate unices all have posix compatability... porting an X app or a command line app is easy, because they all share posix and X... once you get off windows and to a unix, switching between unices is relatively painless in the sense of porting software and file structure. :)

Re:Turn around.

[n1vux]

Correct, VM and CMS were internally IBM developed, but were initially not supported products, largely in academic use, hence the confusion. It was developed at IBM Cambridge Science Center, which occupied 2 floors in the same building as MIT Project MAC, now MIT AI & LSC, in the Tech Square complex. (When CSC mutated into a AI/KE consultancy, it moved down the street to Main at Mem, was it One Main?. Both Kendall Square and Tech Square have been redevloped in recent times; I miss the F&T diner.)

VM for the 360/370 was derived from their experimental CP-40 and CP-67, which did really strange things with the memory map hardware in the 360/40 eventually 360/67 ... and demonstrated that the MMU should be standard in future models. CMS, the Conversational (originally Cambridge) Monitor System, was the primary user component to load into the virtual machines created by VM. Before it became VM/SP, the bundle was VM/CMS. Marketing tried to kill VM/CMS a few times, but the user community SHARES kept it alive until marketing reallized it was gold. Many early adopters were universities, some of whome had their own lightweight variant OS's loaded in a VM, which combined lightweight user support of TSO with capabilities of CMS.

I am unclear as to whether CP/67 and VM were as derivative of the MIT 7094 CTSS as CMS was. CMS's derivation from CTSS may be the academic confusion in the oritinal comment on this; or perhaps that the first "customer" was also MIT related (Lincoln Labs). See also Project MAC history.

Re:Turn around.

[jsavit]

For the authoritative source, see Melinda Varian's "History of VM and the VM User Community" at http://pucc.princeton.edu/~melinda which describes this in detail.

The bundle was called VM/370 before being renamed (and enhanced) as VM/SP; subsequently there were VM/XA, VM/ESA and current z/VM. Quite correct that the user community was instrumental in keeping it alive and that SHARE and the universities were key in this. And, it was (and mostly remains) available in source code to its licensees. There was a bitter fight with IBM over that but they came around (the VM team always had their hearts in the right place; it was the other guys needing convincing)

The CP portions of CP/67 of VM/370 and their descendants weren't as derivative of CTSS as CMS because CTSS wasn't a hypervisor.

A step in the right direction

[siege04]

A big company such as IBM switching to Linux is sure to bring good things to the community. Perhaps this is the first major step in bringing Linux to the desktop market.

Re:A step in the right direction

[Anonymous Coward]

i was sorta hoping GNU/linux would have conquered the world by 2005 : /

when i read "IBM Moves To Linux Desktop", i thought they were talking about the PCs they sell. For a second, i thought we were seeing the beginning of the end of the OS wars.

Lets hurry up people! We need to conquer the world before secure computing destroys it!

Re:A step in the right direction

[siege04]

Who knows, if they manage to come up with something unified and useful for their employees, they might try making it (or some form of it) available as an option on the computers they sell.

We can hope anyway.

Re:A step in the right direction

[Cassius105]

Indeed

this thing with there staff is just a massive beta test :)

Re:A step in the right direction

[Cajun Hell]

A big company such as IBM switching to Linux is sure to bring good things to the community. Perhaps this is the first major step in bringing Linux to the desktop market.

Hey, here's an idea: resurrect Workplace Shell. Linux could have the best desktop (easily better than Windows and arguably better than MacOS, though I realize this is all subjective) if they ported that.

Re:A step in the right direction

[HalliS]

well .. duuuuhh? Sorry, but I just hate these redundant "maybe this will be the turning point for winnig jane sixpack over", why is this an interesting post? Does anybody think this is something else then good for the community? Do you think that this will mean status quoe for the OSS community? I don't.

Goodbye Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It was... ahh... "fun" while it lasted!

Re:Goodbye Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. IBM has made great strides with OS2 and Lotus Notes. I'm sure they'll have as much success promoting Linux.

Re:Goodbye Microsoft

[Znonymous Coward]

Actually, this _will_ work... Because, unlike Lotus and OS/2, people actually want Linux.

IBM leak

[weeboo0104]

Geez, first the ISS and now IBM? What gives?

Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[benzapp]

Just think of how much better the 1990's could have been if the entire IBM organization pre-empted Windows 95 by 3.5 solid years.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[cmowire]

Damn you, beating me to the punch.

On the same veign, Motorola doesn't use Macs, they generally use PCs even though they have made the Mac processor for ages.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[eyegone]

They did. It was a nightmare.

The hardware of the time was woefully underpowered for the job. A high-end desktop in the early '90s had maybe 8 MB of RAM. Try running OS/2 2.0, CM/2 (the SNA protocol stack), and Win-OS/2 (Windows 3.0 hacked to run in a DOS session). Win-OS/2 was a requirement, because the 16-bit Windows applications of the time were vastly better than their 32-bit OS/2 counterparts when the latter even existed.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[AndroidCat]

No. IBM had to go through a long agonizing reappraisal first. Before then they couldn't find it with both hands.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[fatboy]

Just think of how much better the 1990's could have been if the entire IBM organization pre-empted Windows 95 by 3.5 solid years.

OS/2 was doomed to fail when directly competing against Windows. Not due to any technical reason, but because you can't beat Microsoft's Windows by attempting to market a better Windows, than Windows. By embracing Linux, you can't be gamed by Microsoft.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[benzapp]

Dude I ran OS/2 2.0 on a 386 DX/40 machine with 8 megs of ram and it ran perfectly. OS/2 2.1 raised the bar, but it wasn't that bad.

I ran a multi-node BBS on a 486 DX2/66 with 12 megs of ram for at least 2 years. I was able to run Wordperfect 6.0 in a seamless session and two dos sessions simultaneously all the time on that machine. It ran just fine.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[eyegone]

OS/2 itself was just barely usable on an 8 MB machine. (My first system was a 33 MHz 486SX with 8 MB which I used with OS/2 2.1.)

But you're ignoring the rest of the software stack I described. All of IBM's networking at the time was SNA, which required Communications Manager/2 (CM/2) on every PC that needed so much as a 3270 emulator. Then there's Win-OS/2, which really means a copy of DOS plus a copy of Windows.

Now you're ready to load your application. Have fun! (My old PS/2 Model 70 literally took 15 minutes to boot every morning. It was actually pretty nice to have an excuse to sit around BSing.)

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[OS24Ever]

Until 1999 OS/2 was a standard desktop load on many of our machines. Lots of our sales force were drug to Windows 2000 Kicking and screaming as well.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran a multi-node BBS on a 486 DX2/66 with 12 megs of ram for at least 2 years. I was able to run Wordperfect 6.0 in a seamless session and two dos sessions simultaneously all the time on that machine.

So you used OS/2 as a glorified DOS Task switcher.

There's nothing about OS/2 that made it use less RAM than, say, Windows NT. I used to run it with 32MB of RAM and it still swapped like crazy.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[benzapp]

Perhaps thats true.

But don't you think Windows compatibility would greatly affect linux adoption in corporate america?

Linux suffers from the same fate OS/2 did, a serious lack of high quality apps.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[sql*kitten]

OS/2 was doomed to fail when directly competing against Windows.

OS/2 was doomed to fail by the internal structure of IBM. You see, the OS/2 group fell under operating systems (or whatever IBM called that group) and the PC group fell under hardware. Each group was responsible for delivering a profit to head office. The OS/2 group said "can you preinstall this on all IBM PCs?" and the PC group replied "why should we take on a risk to our revenue stream just to dig you out of a hole?".

If IBM had structured things so there was one PC group responsible for PC hardware and for PC operating systems, it would have turned out very differently. Most business managers don't really care about OSs beyond them being able to fulfill the business need. If IBM's shipping PCs as part of a turnkey solution (as it used to before it got out of commodity PCs) in 20,000 seat deals and it put OS/2 on them, businesses would have been fine with that, so long as it ran what applications they wanted.

Hmmm, an opening? ;)

[AlphaSector]

Another internal memo leaked from SCO to all employees: "First one to find a way to sue IBM for this is employee for the month"

Re:Hmmm, an opening? ;)

[eLoco]

Those 5 employees are too busy licking envelopes with threatening letters, selling their stock, surfing monster.com when Darl's not looking. No time for this.

Re:Hmmm, an opening? ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

errr employee of the month, not for the month.

unless you are refering to that fact SCO has only got a little bit of time left before they die.

Linux as a desktop?

[R33MSpec]

As i see it this can only serve to help encroach Linux on the user desktop OS market dominated by M$.

Think of it - if the whole of IBM starts using a well designed desktop system, i'm sure a lot of other companies will follow suit.

This really is what Linux needs - a HUGE and well known company using not only a Linux user dekstop system but also assocaited open source applications to get things done in everyday business, while managing NOT to use any M$ products whatsoever.

And if successful and I never thought I'd be saying this but it could be the beginning of the end of Microsoft's total dominance in the desktop OS market.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[siege04]

If they make a unified desktop distribution it could definitely help Linux get a foot in the door of the desktop market.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[Basehart]

How good, or bad, is this for Apple?

Wouldn't they rather be picking up all the disenfranchised Windows users?

Needless to say replacing all those PC's for Apple G4's and 5's is a massive roadblock for such a switch, but at least people get a taste for something other than Windows, which can't be a bad thing on any level.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[coldnight]

More importanly then IBM would be a non-technology company doing the same thing. If IBM can do it and they are the only ones, then the movement has fallen short...

I hope we see a couple of non-tech companies doing the same, then the people for whom tech is not a passion, but a line-item on a budget may notice. Unfortunately, THEY will have alot of influence on when there is a mass movement away from giving money to people for buggy software.

I don't think we should be less evangelical, but trying to put a bussiness perspective on it.

-cn

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[idiotnot]

I think it's basically a non-issue for Apple, because you're forgetting one thing -- IBM still sells a buttload of PC's. I'm sure they're not about to abandon their lucrative notebook line, or their still-popular desktop line. They're leaving the consumer market to Apple, which probably works best for the both of them, because IBM has never been really successful there. PC Jr.? PS/2? OS/2? Aptiva? You get my point. :-) The only advantage Apple has over IBM as far as this goes is a native MS Office.

Two interesting things could come out of this, I think....

1. Porting Lotus Smart Suite to Linux (I don't think they're going to be using *cough* SUN StarOffice or any deritive)
2. PPC97x-based (or Athlon64, since I think IBM is actually fabbing some of those?) business desktops running a desktop environment similar to Sun's Java Desktop.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[dhovis]

I don't think this is a problem for Apple at all. Apple specializes in offering an integrated computing experience. Apple makes the hardware and the OS and some key pieces of software and makes sure they all work together. There is never going to be a computer company with that degree of control over Linux to compete in the comodity PC world.

Nevertheless, any Linux adoption is good for Apple, as virutally any software for Linux can be ported to MacOS X without too much difficulty. Just look at all the software that has been ported already.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there's a package to run Lotus in wine w/o using any windows DLLs so there's probably not going to be a port unless it doesn't work.

Considering that IBMers use Lotus, some workable solution is going to have to be available.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[spacecowboy420]

for everything there is a season.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[zcat_NZ]

A non tech company such as the world's largest manufacturer of guitar strings, perhaps?

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[zcat_NZ]

Just after I posted that (remembering Ernie Ball from an earlier Reg. story) I noticed the same site has a list of large companies who've switched to Linux. Lots of them, with a bit of the story behind each, in just about every category you could imagine. A good number are using Linux on the desktop, not just in a server role.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this means that IBM will sell notebooks
pre-loaded with linux. I don't mind doing my
own installs, but it would be nice to see
drivers for the built-in wireless card, hibernation, and the like.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[shaitand]

I would love to agree with you, but if this is true, where are the systems?

When was the last time you say an IBM Desktop system that was less than 2yrs old in the hands of someone who was not an IBM employee or an IBM employee's family? The notebooks I see once in awhile but certainly not as often as Toshiba's and others.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[idiotnot]

I have about ten here in the office purchased within the past two years, as well as a few notebooks (shipment of those just before Thanksgiving, actually). According to this story, they're still third overall. Good machines, overall, but not much different than you'd get from HP or Dell.

writings on the wall

[kenny blakenship]

for SCO - big blue's lawyers are digging through your garbage for a reason.

for M$ - you can't compete with free as in beer.

Re:writings on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Free as in beer, from IBM???? Are you on crack? IBM will find a way to charge you a lot of money for free software, guaranteed.

Re:writings on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the DOJ should be after Linux for unfair competition... ;p

Re:writings on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

moron. free as in beer for ibm.

Think IBM will be paying...

[cartzworth]

...the Linux licensing fee to SCO? hahahaha

Re:Think IBM will be paying...

[Anonymous Coward]

no. why would anyone think that.

here's hoping

[geekoid]

That they use this oportunity to learn from any issues, take data from the user base, and add to Linux.
With any large deploy of a new system, there will be issues, and if they can correct those and/or customize it for there need in house they will make a great selling point for other corporations.

Why not

[Christoff84]

Why shouldn't IBM move to linux? They are basically fighting for linux against SCO (yes I know, it's about AIX, but linux is there too), if they are dumping so much money into killing/beating SCO, why not use the software they are fighting for themselves. They have the resources to develop and support it themselves.

Re:Why not

[fastgood]

IBM Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2.

"If you're an OS/2 user, you've chosen the OS/2 platform for its reliability, stability, and strong support of mission-critical applications, and you're interested in using the best tools available."

Just replace one word for the latest mantra...

There is a business reason for this...

[Fortunato_NC]

(I guess that rates a big DUH!)

But the business reason probably has something to do with Longhorn shipping 2006ish, and avoiding paying an upgrade fee to MS for desktops for over 300,000 employees worldwide. Even if the upgrade costs them just $79 and they only have to upgrade 100,000 computers, they could still save a cool $7.9 million by switching to a Linux desktop.

You talk about an MS tax, an additional $7.9 million looks good on anyone's bottom line. I wish IBM good luck with this one!

Of course, if they got rid of PC's altogether and replaced them with 3270 terminals and daisy wheel printers, they would be able to save $$$ on desktop management costs. ;-)

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are off base here... 7.9 million is snot to a company like IBM and they will likely spend much more than that converting everything over. I think they really believe in Linux and want to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Fortunato_NC]

But it's not just $7.9 million once, it's a recurring expense every two to three years. Getting off the upgrade Merry-Go-Round pays dividends immediately AND going forward. Once they've endured the pain of the switchover, it will be easier the next time they want to roll out a new distro, upgrade X, whatever. In fact, this could lead to some cool tools like ZENworks, but for the Linux desktop. In fact, IBM *did* just invest $50 million in Novell! Wonder what those guys in Utah are up to, anyway?

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The other problem is that Longhorn doesn't have Ogg support. People talk about an MS tax, but there's also the Fraunhofer tax. Nobody wants to pay that, and eliminating it is good for just about anyone's bottom line. If you're trying to run a profit-making company, one of the obvious things you should try to avoid, are patent licensing fees.

Can you imagine the patent licensing fees for 100,000 computers? It would be horrendous. It is no surprise that IBM has learned to ask for Ogg support.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Laser Lou]

You talk about an MS tax, an additional $7.9 million looks good on anyone's bottom line. I wish IBM good luck with this one!

Hmmm. It can't be the license fees. $7.9 million is peanuts for any business the size of IBM.

They must be doing this to increase Linux' credibility, show SCO the finger, gain control over the core desktop, and encourage customers to buy their Linux software, all at the same time.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder what those guys in Utah are up to, anyway?

Likely adding Ogg support, if they have any sense at all. Getting off the patent licensing merry-go-round pays dividends immediately AND going forward.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Slugworth01]

Another business reason - IBM has a huge global services organization that competes in Systems Integration with a number of players. I've worked with them/competed with them in some business deals. I can see this as a huge benefit for their services group. They are already pushing Linux servers in their services offerings. If they are successful at proving Linux desktops for business through their own internal experience, it puts them in a stronger position when competing for SI business. They will walk the walk, so to speak.

They can position lower cost HW, OS and apps for both the servers and desktops, lowering their overall price when compared to someone offering a HP-UX, Solaris, or Windows-based SI package. Well done, IBM.

Of course, a portion of the money saved in the HW, OS and apps can go into paying for more IBM consultants on site to keep everything running in the outsourced data center.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[afidel]

Developing a Linux desktop solution that scales to the size of IBM is going to cost at LEAST 8 million. Then you get into training the internal helpdesk folks, etc and soon it's not really a win just on internal use. The real win is the experience you get so that you can sell the solution to your customers.

*disclaimer*
I work for IBM in a rollout and customer service capacity.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[child_of_mercy]

licensing cost saving,

but also they turn their own organisation into a troubleshooting database creation shop.

If they document the process well (anyone want tobet they won't) then they can save a lot of their own time (which = money) doing similar rollouts for other people.

External organisations won't let them gather the same grade dtata on a systematic basis.

Plus it must be tough to sell an organsiation on a linux desktop rollout when they see your own desktop is still windows.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[duffbeer703]

The organization that I work for spends about $14 million on IBM services alone.

$7 million to a corporation like IBM, whose sales are greater than the GDP of most nations, is like you hitting the gumball machine at the supermarket.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Repran]

AND IBM will be ready to provide services for all those company pondering the question of going with Longhorn or OSS in 2006.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[bluGill]

And there would be no training costs for your helpdesk when Longhorn comes? Get real, there will be. And people switch jobs all the time, you can be pretty sure IBM would be training a lot of help desk people anyway just to keep the new guys up to date. (Face it, help desk isn't a popular carrer choice, but many do it for a time)

Then there are cost savings because Linux was designed from the ground up to be multi-user with the users not having administrator rights. One of the big articals on MSDN this month is how to write your app so someone can use it without being administrator. That suggests to me that many apps require the user to be administrator. (but I don't know, I avoid windows except when required to use it)

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[burns210]

they recruited the Novell workforce as the invasion army for SCO headquarters, ofcourse.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[strider_starslayer]

Except that; IBM allready has a large Linux support center, and that's growing. Anyone applying for an internal transfer to the linux areas will get linux training, and anyone applying for an internal transfer from the linux areas will allready have linux training. As a result- all the internal helpdesk folk probabally allready need to know linux RIGHT NOW so that they can troubleshoot a problem when the external tech support guys screw up there test computers running linux.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[AntiOrganic]

Developing a Linux desktop solution that scales to the size of IBM is going to cost at LEAST 8 million.

Since IBM's yearly revenues teeter around 80 billion, last I checked, I think they might just have a few pennies burning a hole in their pocket.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, last I checked IBM already has about 30,000 employees using Linux as their primary desktop OS. Of course, that's only 10% of the employee base, but IBM has the bases covered for support and training.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't worry too much about those "internal helpdesk folks". They're fairly switched on when it comes to Linux.

*disclaimer*
I work for IBM in an internal helpdesk capacity.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[sharekk]

IBM has abandoned using Lotus Notes inside the organisation

I don't know where people got the idea that this is the entire organization. The article says that there's a challenge to get the top folks at IBM moved over to linux by '05. This is Very different from a mandate that everyone in IBM is moved over. I expect most of the execs could get away with openoffice and lotus notes and if they were handed a machine with both these installed I doubt there would be too many helpdesk calls.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I work for IBM in a rollout and customer service capacity."

then you are bound by the BCGs to keep your yapper shut!

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[swv3752]

Almost anything not developed directly by MS requires admin rights at least to install. To install the Palm Desktop software, one must be an admin user, at least during the install. There are many other apps that are as bad if not worse.

Yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

because we all know that IBM is just going to give their desktop away, just like Sun.

Hey, when you buy a pc, your direct cost on Windows XP Home might be as little as $15 bucks.

Re:Yeah....

[timmarhy]

15$ what planet are you from? even if that were the case it's still $15 vs $0 if a supplier preloaded linux. thats in cost to the supplier for the software that doesn't need to be passed on to the consumer.

Re:Yeah....

[irokitt]

XP Home? For one thing, I doubt the cost is only $15. Secondly, I would refuse to buy XP Home-strictly Win2k or XP Pro. Thirdly, I don't buy anything that someone else put together - I build my own systems. Finally, Linux is free as in beer. It doesn't get better than that.

Re:Yeah....

[Drantin]

He's referring to the price that pc and laptop vendors return when they get asked for a refund on the MS tax... I'm guessing (well, repeating others' speculations) that they don't have to pay the full price to pre-load them on the hardware...

Re:Yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

You know those build-it yourself and ship it systems from stores? If you get the price list of all the SKU's printed out, the SKU for the OS is listed at about $15 bucks the last time I checked. I have no idea why they would let wage slaves print out and distribute that kind of information. I got the impression it was frowned on. But for them to even have access to it seems like poor planning.

In anycase, a guy I know who sets up small office networks, principally for escrow agents, used to get his copies of win2kpro for about $20 bucks a shot with service pack, and bonus encryption disk from his pal in Redmond. The boxes would come with a MS shipping order and the whole nine yards, so I doubt anything untowards was happening with it.

While Linux is indeed free. IBM's desktop won't be. And if it isn't, there is no way in hell it's even going to be close to 15 bucks.

Blah blah M$ -- Look a dollar sign, they're evil, they murder whole families and drink the boold of their first born! Than one time $15, stacks up pretty good against Mandrake, and Redhat products.

But that's not what you pay when you buy the shiney box, obviously. But that's not where Microsoft needs to keep it's edge. That's not where IBM needs to wage price war. Maybe they can kick microsoft's ass when it comes to what moves off the shelves, they'll go broke doing it. (But in all honesty, it would take a pretty fantastic overhaul of KDE to do even that, and I hope they give it a shot!)

At best, and what I think is an outside shot, IBM might give away their desktop, or even take something like KDE and give it a major fine tuneing, and provide it under the GPL or just let it be folded back into the standard KDE, and then sell service and support. Which would pretty much be perfect for me, in a perfect world. But that seems less likely than them making their own desktop setup, not returning much of it to open source, and selling their lucrative and by most accounts great services.

Which is nothing. Linux is just being used by someone else to make money. Woo. So what, Microsoft could have their own distro too, returning nothing. Should we all cheer for that?

SCO could come out with their own linux to the desktop enterprise distro, and it's logo could be Calvin peeing on a dead penguin, and it's not any different.

Yeah! Woo IBM. Go make money. No real benefit to us, but for some reason you're not the evil empire anymore, we've moved on to hating something else. We're erratic like that. Next week we're going to start writing our epic ballad about how microsoft doesn't respect our personhoods! Let us know when Digital Sharecropping is in alpha for the home users I wanna sign my grandma up!

Sure, and IBM linux desktop is interesting. But if they don't give back, it's no more interesting than Longhorn.

Re:Yeah....

[timmarhy]

you mean they aren't paying the price of the retail box, i certainly hope not. but i'd be shocked if it was only $15usd. but it's still not cheaper then $0!!!

Re:Yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, in a way you shouldn't be. The supply chain for the box is long. It requires a lot of hands. But from MS perspective, the supply chain for the copy of windows on damn near every PC is extremely short.

And IBM's desktop isn't going to be free.

Now is the time

[Ars-Fartsica]

People keep saying "next year"...but I think you need a larger target audience to get the impetus for change. Its great to see IBM eat their own dogfood, and of course there are no worries - GNOME or KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc are all well suited to provde the tasks the employees will actually need.

Of course IBM could also see a huge cost savings over time as well, and provide a true real-world case for negating the ridiculous "TCO" whipping horse MS continues to fabricate results against.

Re:Now is the time

[AndroidCat]

What happens when the 800 lb gorilla decides that it wants to use a particular configuration? Sure, people can still use other desktops, browsers, office software, etc. People had choices before Microsft ate the market.

The pull of developing and using a standard configuration can be huge.

Now .. the question is .. is this a bad thing?

Re:Now is the time

[SubtleNuance]

What will happen is that IBM will be investing in/literally making the changes themselves so that IBM -- a 300k employee outfit -- has a capable Desktop OS.

What that means is they are going to really start riding the horse, driving it -- what is going to come out of this is, 'by the end of 2005' is *the* GNU/Linux desktop everyone's been clamouring about.

If its good enough for IBM, it will be good enough for you, me and everyone else....

THAT SAID -- what are the stock plays in this? Buy IBM? Who is going to benefit? Redhat? Novell?

Re:Now is the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Its great to see IBM eat their own dogfood
--
Hey, they're using linux, not windows.

Re:Now is the time

[spacecowboy420]

A standard configuration? For all of us? I think there will always be some up and coming something or another that will force diversity - as long as technology advances. Maybe a very similiar Kernel, but this will essentially be for hardware interfacing.

We consider ourselves individuals, but look at how closely our dna matches "lower" (different) species, and look how different we are compared to them. Yes they are alive, some even have very similiar features, yet we are different.

Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[pointym5]

IBM's internal email, expense reporting, project planning, etc. is already (supposed to be) Notes-based.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Ars-Fartsica]

Apparently Notes inside IBM is going going gone

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12197

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[bailout911]

Uh apparently, you missed this which says IBM has already dumped notes because it sucks:

No more notes

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad news guys. As an IBMer, I can tell I'm still using Notes everyday by the blisters I get sitting on my butt waiting for it.

We don't use it for project management or expenses, though.

FWIW -- I never got the e-mail that started the whole thing and I'm in a position where it would show up in my inbox. There's no mention of it anywhere on the interal web either. This might be a hoax.

- Anonymous IBMer

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too. Worse, there are tons of crappy internal apps implemented as notes databases. Most aren't "corporate directive" level, but departmental and organizational doodads. Migrating all that to the web would be non-trivial.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[chriskenrick]

But Lotus Notes doesn't run natively under Linux does it? Last time I spoke to IBMers, they were forced to run it under Wine, if anything

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, maybe you're about to be fired for posting too much on Slashdot, and that's why the message wasn't passed on to you.

- Anonymous Boss

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur with this. There is just no way that IBM will be forcing anyone to switch to a Linux desktop. Perhaps make it optional, but the productivity cost would be astronomical. Think of how much money 1% of productivity means to 150,000 technical people. Yes, Linux may be a big thing in the future, but not by 2006.

The notion that IBM is going to ditch Lotus Notes anytime soon is so preposterous that I am surprised anyone even took it seriously.

What is even funnier is how someone joked about a large part of DB2 being licensed from other places!

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

hm, dont believe the hype. This person is "in a position where it would show up in his inbox"? Reallly now.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard rumors of a total switch to Linux for a few months. But the ISCI image of linux isn't even officially supported yet!!! We were having tons of trouble getting Linux to install (their image was broken)...and the helpdesk wouldn't help us...

-Other Anonymous IBMer

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't run the IBM ISCI install disk lately on your Thinkpad have you? You can pick advanced, and then the Linux Desktop option is there right next to the Windows 2000 and Windows XP options.

Guess you're not in the right position for that to float through your inbox. It's common knowledge throughout the xSeries field technical sales community and that's how I learned how to blow down the RH Ximian image.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

No way that's possible at least not as stated, perhaps they misheard that IBM has finally officially gassed Lotus SmartSuite for interal use, not that it will disappear from anyone's desktop real soon due to the mounds of legacy Freelance and WordPro content out there but all new stuff is supposed to be produced in, (gasp) MS-Office. The lack of a usable Notes client on Linux remains the biggest current impediment to widespread deployment of a Linux desktop. Any solution that requires the user to be plugged into the IBM network or VPN to access an the application (Citrix style) will face massive revolt from the hordes of mobile employees.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[IANAAC]

The server runs natively on Linux. The client needs Wine (or, in my case, Crossover Office).

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been happy about Notes on Linux and it's behind the Win version by a generation or more.

On the other hand, the article that prompted this thread had a pointer claiming that IBM was also abandoning Notes internally. Another unsubstantiated rumor, probably, but if true, that's one can of dog food that Lotus won't like IBM not eating, though many others will cheer in the aisles.

Yet another anonymous IBMer.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the people mentioned in the e-mail in BluePages, and note their job responsibilities. I'm not saying it isn't a hoax, but that lends some credibility.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news guys. As an IBMer, I can tell you we're not using Notes anymore.

FWIW -- I did got the e-mail that started the whole thing and I'm the CEO of the company. Believe it! It was posted to slashdot! This is most certainly not a hoax.

- Not-so-Anonymous Pseudo-IBMer

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[autiger]

That article is a complete misrepresentation of what was said at the conference. Deborah Magrid, the IBMer referred to in the article, has made a statement to IBM business partners declaring it a misquote and explaining what was really said.

Does the Inquirer ever retract erroneous articles?

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since Lotus bought IBM, more and more business "intelligence" has been moved to Notes database. It's a real lock-in tar baby.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You're FIRED!! All IBMer's are REQUIRED to read Slashdot - It's how we keep track of those punks at SCO y'know.

- The Boss of Anonymous Boss

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[slantyyz]

Actually, migration of Notes apps should be trivial, if the developers didn't do anything too fancy with the Notes client. Most Notes apps are instantly web-ready when accessed via a web-enabled Domino server. While Notes may be fugly, it is a very good tool for developing apps for small groups and departments.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[0x0d0a]

God *damn* it, I wish the IBM PR folks would get off their asses and get this article corrected if it's wrong.

Also, I agree wholeheartedly with you that Notes sucks. It has wonderful lock-in potential, and I'm sure it's smart from a business perspective, but good God, it's a royally awful piece of software.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Tennyson]

Greetings fellow anonymous IBMer. I also did not get the email, but I did hear about it, from a colleague in the linux speciality, over a month ago. Personally, I don't think it's a hoax, whether its a good idea or not remains to be seen.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[jeremyp]

I know somebody who works for IBM Global Services (which is not quite the same as IBM). Notes is pretty well entrenched there. It is not going to be ditched at any time in the near future.

They did, however, stop using Lotus Smartsuite (their office suite) some time ago because it is rubbish compared with M$ Office and - more importantly - all their customers used M$ Office, so they had to.

My main thinking behind this move to Open Source is that they don't want to have to pay enormous licence fees to their biggest competitor anymore. Open source software now perovides reaistic competition to M$ in the most important space (office productivity tools), so why not?

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[PurpleWizard]

It might be a hoax but your comment about waiting for Notes everyday might be another reason to roll out something new.

If there is a lot of older stuff still in use and now a cheap way to step across the board to something new and hopefully for you faster. Then it makes a lot of sense.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Many apps may port to the web, but I doubt that Lotus TeamRoom would port. The ability to make those rich-text documents with file attachments everywhere would be a bit much.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

" I can tell I'm still using Notes everyday by the blisters I get sitting on my butt waiting for it."

Stop using the server copy and replicate. No lines, no waiting.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Jmstuckman]

Notes isn't really "older stuff", though. Notes Version 6 is new. It's not really "older" stuff any more than SMTP is old.

Not always a good thing

[kjd]

Take WebSphere...

...please!

Re:Not always a good thing

[Slugworth01]

But Websphere on Linux? Hmmm ... lemme think about that.

Re:Not always a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

WebSphere on Linux? Yes, WebSphere has been fully supported on Linux for quite some time now.

Re:Not always a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Websphere run's fine on linux. The OPs point was that Websphere is a steaming pile of turd.

I'll take his challange!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good motivation to move our office to linux. This is actually pretty exciting. Man, I really like IBM these days!

GO IBM!

This is about dog food

[siskbc]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design. They've got the ability to tailor-design an OS to the needs of their company and deploy it enterprise-wide, and with Linux and friends, do it without losing much cross-platform compatibility.

I don't think this makes sense from a productivity standpoint. Most of us probably believe that linux wins a TCO fight with Windows, but that would not be the case if you had to develop all your basic tools from scratch, even for IBM.

No, this is about eating their own dog food. It's not a good message when you're pushing your product but you use other products. If IBM is to convince buyers to use Linux for typical desktop productivity work, they better use it themselves.

Re:This is about dog food

[kjd]

I don't think this makes sense from a productivity standpoint. Most of us probably believe that linux wins a TCO fight with Windows, but that would not be the case if you had to develop all your basic tools from scratch, even for IBM.

Oh, I don't mean to speculate that they'll do it from scratch. They'll probably build on top of Redhat or SUSE.

The dog food-eating will certainly make them look good too.

Re:This is about dog food

[KrispyKringle]

Does IBM offer a Linux desktop? I can't recall any offhand. And they probably do use Linux on their servers (or at least some of them), so in that sense, they do ``eat their own dog food'' (isn't that what MS decided Hotmail had to do with respect to Solaris/BSD versus Windows?).

Re:This is about dog food

[SnowZero]

Does IBM offer a Linux desktop?

They don't offer one now, but I bet they will by 2005. One way to think of what IBM is doing is as an internal beta.

Re:This is about dog food

[GAVollink]

Tools aren't necessarily equivelent to an O.S. - how about helpdesk software, is that already running on Linux? What about customer service, customer relationship management - Email infrastructure. There are a lot of "tools" that companies have to use.

The good news here is that since IBM (along with the rest of the world) has been pushing J2EE solutions for so long, many of these tools may already be web based. That would make ALL the difference my friends. J2EE web based apps ARE the MS killer - simply because EVERYONE has dumped the 'it must be installed locally on a Win32 box' mentality.

Last part is a bit of an irony - but Microsoft has pushed .NET so hard, it's made a lot of companies take a serious look at J2EE - simply because Microsoft has said the letters SO MANY TIMES.

Re:This is about dog food

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend works for IBM. They have had a Linux client available for over 2 years now, in various stages of testing. You can even get a desktop or laptop for work use loaded with Linux instead of XP I'm told. He also says that all their business apps have been written in Java (mandated) and most of them are web based or web apps that launch java applications that talk directly to their back ends. It doesn't sound like capatability will be an issue. Wonder what their help desk for Linux is like?

Re:This is about dog food

[Jukashi]

Im pretty sure TCO takes productivity into account, otherwise not having any computers at all would result in the best TCO :/

Im not sure what 'basic tools' IBM uses in windows that do not have a GNU replacement, but I would imagine they would be able to leverage various oss projects/code to create them 'from scratch'. I would say this is 10% PR and 90% rad.

Re:This is about dog food

[deadgoon42]

This isn't about eating their own dog food, this is about investment in the future. IBM knows that the M$ monopoly won't last forever, so they are taking steps now to ensure they have a piece of the future.

Re:This is about dog food

[Anonymous Coward]

I love to developing web based tools but I hate like hell using them. Any end user will tell you that web apps have a V E R Y L O N G way to go before coming close to fat client counter parts. They are generally slower and less intutive.

J2EE was DOA thanks to SUN. They had a chance to change what everyone thought of as a operating system but they failed. Why? For the same reason Mac failed - because they want total control. .NET will succeed because MS has opened it up - take a look at Mono for example, the next gen of Linux desktops could very well be based on .NET. Had SUN stepped up to the plate 10 years ago they would aleady own the Linux desktop not their time has passed. .NET simply brings more to the table.

Re:This is about dog food

[michaelhood]

You think that memo was leaked on accident? This is the best way IBM could publicize the fact that they're "eating their own dog food". No press conferences, no big statements here. Just letting it be known.

Re:This is about dog food

[16K Ram Pack]

That's one reason.

There's some other reasons that I could imagine. IBM can see how Linux works in a large enterprise by using their own. If people start saying "this don't work", they can find replacements, get things in, make changes etc. That experience has got to count with external customers.

Additionally, once they've got it working, and know how to get it going, how about they start selling IBM Desktop Linux. What's the best known branded Linux? RedHat. Respect to RH, but for a lot of bosses, particularly in small businesses, someone like IBM releasing a Distro or a Linux PC would raise the credibility of Linux (even if it's Suse or RH rebadged with tweaks).

And finally, they stop handing over money to a competitor.

Re:This is about dog food

[demented]

Actually, I think it's is mostly about On Demand Computing that IBM is trying to promote. If I understood it correctly, it is basicaly a one grid system consisting of all (or nearly all) servers in a corporation, but also of all the workstations that join and leave this big grid as people are coming and going. For that to work IBM is putting a lot of new software bits for automated management (a lot of it at the firmware level), at least on the server line, and I suppose that they need something on the client side as well to complete the system.

My knowledge of grids is very superficial but I think that most of the software running on top of grids is web or java-based. IBM is very strong there with its WebSphere and DB2 and one should expect their Linux Desktop solution to be web-based as well - more like OEone then Gnome/KDE stuff - it is a corporate productivity desktop environment after all!

Re:This is about dog food

[PurpleWizard]

Would that give them in theory the largest single amount of computing to bring to bare anywhere? All the cumulative capacity of the workstations and the bigger machines as one usable mass.

Gartner will say...

[msevior]

This is just a ploy to extract a more favourable deal from MicroSoft...

I would move 100% to linux if

[Anonymous Coward]

I could play retail video games with no hassel

Still needs more 3rd party support

[Camel Pilot]

In my wife's small business the only obstacle to going to a linux desktop is vender tools such as UPS worldship and Stamps.com, etc.

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[MajorDick]

Well, Dosent Stamps, and UPS BOTH offer Web-Based versions ? Beyond that what about WINE ? I had a fair bit of problems migrating various people (for some it is simply NOT an option) But many of the others were resolved by the use of WINE and running Win32 apps under it ( some actually seemed to run faster :)

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[TheDarkener]

...As well as support for SCSI-driven jalapeno holders?

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[Anonymous Coward]

Citrix.

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[0x0d0a]

You know, it's really silly that WorldShip isn't Java-based. It's basically nothing more than a front end that does a bit of network work. You couldn't *ask* for something more appropriate for Java.

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[Camel Pilot]

Yes that was my thought also. But what can one expect from piece of software that requires you jump thru a convoluted set of hoops (establishing a dsn) just import a csv file?

Potential tradeoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe with the money they'll save, IBM will be able to keep a few more jobs at home, instead of shipping them to Bangalore.

OK, you can stop laughing now.

Surprise?

[x3ro]

Although this is good news, it's not really much of a surprise. IBM have been making noises in this direction for some time now ...

What would be a turn-up for the books is if Sun started pushing a Linux desktop --- oh wait, they already did :)

Zero chance of this

[Ars-Fartsica]

I have not seen an official pronouncement but I believe IBM is in the GNOME camp.

Re:Zero chance of this

[jc42]

I believe IBM is in the GNOME camp.

Yeah, I've heard that rumor, too. Probably here on /. ;-)

And it's the significant part. After all, linux is an OS kernel. It isn't a UI. The phrase "linux desktop" is utterly nonsensical. Any X-Windows "desktop" will run on linux.

The sensible thing for IBM or any other vendor to do is settle on a reasonably good window manager, and start building an integrated UI based on it. Gnome would work fine, as would KDE or Enlightenment or FVWM or CDE or ....

What wouldn't make sense if you're looking for a near-term market is starting your own window manager project. This would delay a lot of the integration work and put your "integrated desktop" package several years in the future.

This could be a deal with the devil for the Gnome folks, though. IBM has a long history of turning reasonable packages into bureaucratic monstrosities. If you think Gnome is bloated from featuritis now, just wait until you see IBM's extensions.

Has anyone here seen PL/I? Or used JCL?

Re:Zero chance of this

[handmedowns]

My thoughts/hopes weren't so much as a directive business move from IBM to make a new DE (which would be cool) but from one or more developers not finding a happy place with what DE's exist today..

You've got to remember, necessity is the mother of invention.. and just about all popular and widely accepted software projects exist out of the want for something better or more custom fit to your needs.

Think about how meticulous the true geek crowd is (not the wannabe's). You force a large group of technically inclined people to use something that just doesn't settle with them right and who knows what happens in the "off-hours". Before long you have a movement for a new DE and a strongly supported project =]

Well that's me day dreaming anyway ;)

Re:Zero chance of this

[AJWM]

Has anyone here seen PL/I? Or used JCL?

Yes to both, and I've also used PL/I. (As a matter of fact, I've done so on my Linux box right here, using the Hercules IBM/370 emulator -- but I've also done the real iron.)

And APL which originated at IBM.

That said, they've also come up with some pretty good stuff, just give me a minute to think of it... oh yeah, the Guidance and Control system for the Saturn V, for one ;-)

Seriously, that was the old IBM. Lately they've been much better at delivering what the customer wants rather than what IBM thinks the customer needs. IBM isn't going to create their own desktop -- especially not at this stage of the process, where this is deployment for internal use. And I imagine most of the custom client apps will be web and/or Java based.

Not that IBM doesn't know a thing or two about desktop design -- their CUA (Common User Access) object-oriented desktop architecture is/was great, one of the things that OS/2 fans still rave about (although IIRC the OS/2 desktop wasn't quite CUA).

Re:Zero chance of this

[ShaunDon]

That may be, dude. And I wouldn't be shocked if IBM's Linux desktop solution is widely liked by the Slashdot crowd. But you have to admit that it's still a major step simply because it will draw a huge audience away from Windows, spurring more development by other companies for Linux. The users that then become experienced enough will probably stop using IBM's version in time, and the rest will still be using an OS that furthers Linux's reach.

ShaunDon

Re:Zero chance of this

[Dan Farina]

I was under the impression that they meant desktop as in the hardware classification of computer (the things most of us use, not mainframes or supercomputers, etc), not a certain desktop _environment_, the software.

Re:Zero chance of this

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is a member of the gnome foundation and was a member of the kde league before it imploded.

IBM's "official" internal client was KDE based the last time I used it.

I think IBM is in the camp of "whichever one will somebody will buy from us."

Re:Zero chance of this

[natmsincome.com]

After the invested 50 million into Novell I'd be fairly sure that they'd end up using Ximian desktop on Suse. Think of what it's like now, add 2.6 kernal, add better Open Office, add Java with Gnome support, add D-BUS and HAL, then add the advances in X that should happen over the next 12 months as the fork refactors the code and you have a fairly good desktop from what I can see.

On top of that they are moving everything to webportals (or to be more correct and you have portals or portals) and everything should be fairly easy.

It shoulds like they want stuff that's easy to port to be ported and then convert the rest into a web application. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Re:Zero chance of this

[rah1420]

(he begins to shake...)

And APL which originated at IBM.

There are two things a man must do
Before his life is run;
Write three lines in APL
And make the buggers run.

-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"

Re:Zero chance of this

[Strudelkugel]

Lets see, before they had OS2. Guess the new desktop will be OSX...

Oops.

Couldn't resist. Who wants the world to run with REXX anyway.

Re:Zero chance of this

[cmacb]

"And APL which originated at IBM."

I'd love to get my hands on a good APL for Linux (with font support). I've dabbled with the Hercules running a VM/370 system. Just like the good old days.

My favorite trick is to set up Hercules, open up a port on my router and get a friend to TN370 into my IP address. When they see the mainframe logo pop up you tell them you picked up an old 370 and have it running in your basement off the dryer outlet. (OK, I have gullible friends).

One thing I've found is that (excluding games) there is a lot MORE software available for Linux than for Windows. It always puzzles me to see someone saying the opposite.

IBM will have little trouble switching to Linux. I have some friends there and they are on a short leash when it comes to tinkering with their IBM supplied laptops. They are consultants, so don't have an IBM desk or phone. Do all their reporting, timekeeping, intellectual capital tracking, etc. on these PCs using a wide variety of cobbled together applications MOST of which are server oriented, in many cases still mainframe oriented. The Windows systems often cause lock-ups, data loss, etc. My guess is it will be more web oriented now and the last thing they need is to have to deal with 17 different patch levels of IE running around out there.

No doubt this is the start of a big trend (in the US anyway).

Re:Zero chance of this

[PReDiToR]

One thing I've found is that (excluding games) there is a lot MORE software available for Linux than for Windows. It always puzzles me to see someone saying the opposite

I hate me for saying this, but...
Are you saying that the immense wealth of shareware/freeware that has been given away and forgotten about on coverdisks over the last 20 years, and all that drool at download.com total less than the available resources at Freshmeat and Sourceforge?
I would say that every tin pot programmer who knows how to write more than hello world has released postcardware at some point for Win16/32.

Re:Zero chance of this

[steveha]

If you think Gnome is bloated from featuritis now

Huh?

GNOME 2.0 had geeks on Slashdot shrieking in agony over all the features that were cut from GNOME 1.x. Did you know that GNOME 2.x, by default, only has one way to maximize a window? Shocking!

So no, I don't think GNOME is bloated with featuritis. I think the GNOME guys have done a great job of paring things down to where you can quickly find the features you actually want to use.

steveha

P.S. If you actually miss the "maximize horizontally only" or "maximize vertically only" commands, you can choose to run GNOME with Sawfish and get them back.

Re:Zero chance of this

[Anonymous Coward]

not logging in as account name

"...seen PL/1?"

Son, I've coded PL/1.

Re:Zero chance of this

[swv3752]

Maybe he meant useable software.

Much of the problem of the acceptance of Free Software by the mainstream has been thier prior experience with shareware. Much of the shareware out there was not worth the postcard to thank the author.

Re:Zero chance of this

[cshark]

But the important thing is that it proves to the rest of corporate america that this is possible. Several large enterprises have already done this successfully. China's in the process of doing it as well. I think that once companies see that this can realisticly be done, that more of the will start doing it. I'm glad. I wish the organization I work for would do the same.

Re:Zero chance of this

[cmacb]

Yep, that's what I meant. Thanks.

With Windows shareware I remember trying dozens of packages before finding one that was worth keeping, and I considered myself lucky if I didn't screw up my system in the process.

In fact with reference to the post I originally responded to I installed the Hercules (an IBM Mainframe emulator) on my Linux system using one command "apt-get" and editing a couple of configurations files. One of the people I showed it too was really hot to get it working for himself, but he insisted on working with the Windows version. Two weeks later he had it limping along, but still with "issues". Plus it made his Windows system fairly useless for any other activity.

Re:Zero chance of this

[AJWM]

I'd love to get my hands on a good APL for Linux (with font support).

Download Sharp APL for Linux. It's available from the Soliton (formerly I.P. Sharp) web site, here. No charge for the personal edition.

)CLEAR
WS CLEARED

Re:Zero chance of this

[AJWM]

Hey, for my sins I not only wrote APL, I actually taught APL. Thankfully those days are long gone.

(Oh, and I think the second line of that poem should read "Before his life is done;" so that you're not forcing "run" to rhyme with itself.)

Re:Zero chance of this

[cmacb]

Ah, thanks. I'll give it a try!

Re:Zero chance of this

[rynoski]

look at os/2 look how hard it was to get your printer up and running when MS was is control. and when IBM took over complete control? that was a much better. run multiple dos's ontop of os/2. one ms-dos thread crashes? doesnt matter. those were the days... of bad operting systems made good.

Re:Zero chance of this

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yeah, the Guidance and Control system for the Saturn V, for one

Because nothing associated with the Saturn V rocket could EVER be termed a monstrosity.

Re:Zero chance of this

[rah1420]

I quoted it hastily, from memory. My bad.

Lotus Notes Client?

[Joseph Lam]

Does that mean there will be Linux version of the Notes client? IBM's whole internal communication and intranet applications depends heavily on Notes/Domino.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[avrao]

Already there

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are currently working on a Java client (based on the Eclipse framework) for their new Lotus Workplace products. This client will have the ability to interact with Notes/Domino.

I haven't heard if it will have full client functionality or just a subset (might be just mail). They are going to have a basic version for release mid-year and then release a full version with offline capability by early next year.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[isepic]

Its not there, what is currently being used on the 'canned' Linux desktop is WINE running the Notes Client. Not too fast either.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[t482]

iNotes for Domino 6.5 supports Mozilla on linux as does the webadmin.nsf administration interface.

I think IBM is working on an eclipse based notes client and integrating Domino into Websphere. Give it 5 years and Domino will be Websphere/DB2.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an internal project at IBM called "Notes Under Linux". Basically, it's Lotus Notes on Wine. It works quite well, in fact.

I don't know if it is available to the public. I certainly can't distribute it.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"Not only is Linux unstoppable, but IBM has abandoned using Lotus Notes inside the organisation because it's far too fat, said Deborah."

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[St. Vitus]

Hopefully it means the complete and utter demise of Lotus Notes.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[OS24Ever]

Notes is still my email client, and still the email client of almost all the xSeries sales and technical people I know/work with (about 500 people)

Don't think that's happening overnight. No saying it might not go away but there is a lot of business processes and documentation circled into Notes.

Plus we'd need some serious contact management and calendaring software that could handle worldwide scheduling. To my knowledge there is nothing like that integrated with email that Linux provides at this time.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[OS24Ever]

Why would you say that? At this time there isn't anything to replace it but Microsoft Exchange. Sendmail, qmail and others I've seen on Linux don't support any method of scheduling. If IBM were to flip to soemthing else *today* they'd have to flip to Exchange.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my organization Lotus Notes has preformed better than expected. It's great for e-mail and other database activity. Work well with our portal and we do not have to shutdown the system because of a virus.

The virus portion along has saved our organization millions of dollars in lost production time for front line staff.

Groupware function is exactly what our business loves and uses today.

If there was one successful application in our business. It's Lotus Notes.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not, now that IBM is dumping Lotus Notes internally.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[NighthawkFoo]

What might happen is that the local Notes client might go away, but there could be some web portal interfaces to the Notes calendar and address book. The domino servers stay around and keep doing their thing, but the user interface can be platform independent.

Doesn't Outlook have a similar capability when coupled with MS Exchange? I seem to recall that SuSE sells a similar product.

OS/2 developers?

[eLoco]

Anyone else wonder what happened to their OS/2 development team? Maybe they're long-since disbanded, but it seems a team like this could make a decent contribution to a Linux desktop system, at least from a usability perspective.

Re:OS/2 developers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boca Raton is essentially shut down and OS/2 developers are either out of the company or on different projects. There's probably still a small handful working on maintenance for banks. OS/2 is dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

Re:OS/2 developers?

[FFFish]

Oh that would be swell. Because then Microsoft would pull an SCO, claiming ownership of their part of the OS/2 code.

Re:OS/2 developers?

[Anonymous Coward]

All current OS/2 development (new drivers and bug fixes only) is done in India now. All the "old" developers were originally moved from Boca Raton to Austin, and have either left or joined various other teams.

Re:OS/2 developers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but the team that did the most important work (that incredible and unmatched scheduler) have long since deprted both internally and externally

Re:OS/2 developers?

[doinky]

The original Workplace Shell developers are all over the country, most not at IBM. Even the Warp 4 team is all over the place now (including me). A few people in Austin still work on it, including a good friend of mine who actually still works on the OS/2 browser from time to time. Some support is done in India. That's all, though.

The *Real* Reason

[JBMcB]

... for switching is, after many years, the employees are finally going insane from using Lotus Notes. They would probably retrograde to OS/2 running IBM Works if it meant no more Notes.

An IBMer's perspective

[diamondsw]

A couple facts from inside IBM. We've had a workstation build for Linux for quite some time, encompassing all basic business needs in IBM (Notes, corporate instant messaging, etc). Also, all of our HR and other internal applications are pretty much web and Java based, with a quiet directive that Mozilla will be our standard browser platform by 2005.

However, many groups use applications that cannot be replaced on Linux. My group, for instance, does nearly all of our work in Visio. I've looked at Kivio and others, and I can't begin to tell you how primitive they are. Also, at least my group does a lot of active development in Visual Basic to automate Visio and other programs.

Essentially what I'm saying is many basic users here may be able to move to Linux, but Windows will remain the primary client for the forseeable future, simply for the applications, integration, and relative ease of working with partners who use Windows.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up and concentrate on putting SCO out of business, okay fuckstick?

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[soft_guy]

No, you need to run Wine! If Wine doesn't run the program adequately, then either the program needs to be ported to Linux, or Wine needs to be improved.

Wine can be like the "Classic" compatibility environment for running MacOS 9 apps in MacOS X. You use it when you have to until the native app gets ported and and gets good enough.

As a former IBMer myself, I encourage you to try to migrate to Linux on some of your boxes. When you run into problems - report them and try to chase them down and get them solved!

IBM's move to Linux on the desktop could be the catalyzing event that kills Windows forever. Go for it!

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's a troll with his head on straight.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[technomom]

Or hedge your bet for now. Get a second drive for that Thinkpad or just partition the drive you have if it's big enough. Run Win2000 on one and Linux in the other.

The only hitch I've run into on the IBM Linux client platform is that my Cisco Aironet card can't seem to get through with WEP turned on on my home router. Everything else runs surprisingly well.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Performer Guy]

You need to read the memo and get with the program :-)

Only kidding.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[1lus10n]

No offense man but your on crack if you think that within 2 years a company the size of IBM couldnt get something built up to where visio is. and thats not even taking into affect the markey pressure buildup for bussiness quality replacements for many microsoft only tools, this will only grow as longhorn gets nearer and more people grow tired of being forced to upgrade, and hence forced to pay more money.

and since this migration has a whole isnt supposed to happen for another ~2 years there is plenty of time to deal with whatever minor problems are out there.

kiss you MS goodbye !!! ;-)

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[burns210]

understandable, but you are IBM. You have the resources to port what apps you control, or fund development of WINE so that you can run what apps you can't port. Plus, the porting of ALL your apps also helps when you go to move another company to Linux. Eating your own food is the cheapest way to find what needs to be fixed and rush it's development in the corporate world.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Essentially what I'm saying is many basic users here may be able to move to Linux, but Windows will remain the primary client for the forseeable future, simply for the applications, integration, and relative ease of working with partners who use Windows.

So exactly why should I be moving my own company to Linux? Really--this is all about dog food. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that IBM didn't do this already, when they started their Linux push. Now, it's getting to be a little ridiculous--or do you mean that Linux is good enough for other folks, but when you need to get real work done, you still use Win?

My guess is, that if this doesn't turn out be a hoax, lots of this kind of stuff will be ported or re-implemented on Linux--and the whole business world will benefit, because they will be have those tools available to them as well. In fact, no one is saying that IBM's version of Linux compatible Visio would be necessarily free for others...meaning a nice application revenue stream from all those folks that IBM switches. Wouldn't IBM rather be catching some of that revenue rather than sending it to MSFT?

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[SubtleNuance]

I've looked at Kivio and others, and I can't begin to tell you how primitive they are. Also, at least my group does a lot of active development in Visual Basic to automate Visio and other programs.

If your group pays for Visio Licenses, why dont you convince instead spend some $$$ by sponsering a Kivio developer? If you can get him to add the Must-Haves to Kivio, maybe you'd be fine....?

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[leandrod]

> I've looked at Kivio and others, and I can't begin to tell you how primitive they are.

Including a recent Dia?

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Uteck]

But Crossover Office will run Visio. Or IBM will employ other programers to bring kivo or dia up to par with visio.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but the helpdesk won't support Linux...the ISCI image is officially unsupported so there's nobody to answer our phone calls when they screwed up their latest image...we're not supposed to install a non-ISCI image on a secure box...DOH!

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Robert The Coward]

So exactly why should I be moving my own company to Linux? Really--this is all about dog food. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that IBM didn't do this already, when they started their Linux push. Now, it's getting to be a little ridiculous--or do you mean that Linux is good enough for other folks, but when you need to get real work done, you still use Win?

1st have you every tried to convert 300,000 Desktop machines. I convert 20 Desktop from NT to 2000 and because they all had different hardware I had to install 2000 on each machine and it took a week. Granted IBM would not take a week to convert 20 Machines but 1st you have to make sure you don't lose any software or make some business proc fail to work. Software break with service packs how many of you would trust a straight upgrade from 2000 to XP with out testing. 2nd you have to have the people whos desktop is changing get training. Then you can start to rollout a few desktop to make sure you build is good. Fix the mistakes there are alwas a few. Redeploy. Confirm that work now. Do the rest of the depart. Repeat thought rest of company. 2 to 3 Year isn't out of the question at all. This is true for windows just as much as linux. Most major company are moving the last of there NT server upto 2000 Now. A small number are starting to deploy XP but most are still using 2000. How many year ago did 2000 come out? How many years ago did XP Pro?

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Stinking Pig]

That would be hilarious if it wasn't so painful. I've tried Visio 2000 under Crossover Office and straight winhq Wine. I have nothing but praise for the work those folks are doing, they've worked wonders with Word and Excel. But Visio is realistically unusable on a practical basis, and I don't even do any VB automation.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[halo8]

what fucking part of the company do you work for?

HR?!?1? when i want to get paid i have to submit my hours through VT100 terminal emulators.. %90 of my work is done that way. black and white terminal screens.

and webbased? do you mean seibel? PLEASE.. hardly the best example.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Submit hours? VT100? DARs have been gone for years and submitting hours on VM systems is ancient news too. And I've never heard of using VT100s for hours.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

VMs are still used for co-op/intern hours. Why would anyone use VT100 for anything though? What are they connecting to? Or does this person not know the difference between VT100 and the connection to the VM system?

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[0x0d0a]

I'd like to suggest that you consider a current copy of Dia, if you haven't already.

Visio probably has more features and pre-drawn symbols. However, the only thing I've needed to use the two for -- building UML project skeletons -- it was *much* faster to enter the data in Dia, which didn't require clicking through a number of fields and tabs for each element entered. I've also had Visio die on me a couple times, which was quite irritating. Also, Dia could generate template code from my diagrams, which was kind of convenient.

Note that Dia has a GIMP-style interface, which weirds out a number of people. However, give it a try and see what you think. I was quite pleased.

Note that I'm not sure how easy it is to automate Dia. GNOME/GTK+ apps tend to be rather weak on scriptability, frusterating on a platform where scriptability has tied the whole thing together for ages.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[0x0d0a]

It'd be expensive, though.

If IBM *really* needs some features, it might be a useful long-term expense (since it also improves their strategic position) to add a developer or two to the Dia project or similar, but doing something from the ground up...ick.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[1lus10n]

this is the joy of open source. they dont need to build something from the ground up.

more likely it wont be that expensive when you take into effect the amount of money they would have to spend buying the microsoft tools. also worth noting is that this could probably be done relativly easily by paying an open source firm (woulda said ximian or the like) a chunk of change (at least to ibm) and saying "develop x".

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like you do nothing to inhance IBM's bottom line and are expendable to IBM. I'd be working on my resume if I were you.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[diamondsw]

Wow, you're still stuck on CLAIM? Geez, we've been on ILC (Java-based) for a year or two now. I haven't fired up VM once in the last year or so.

And to those saying "With IBM's resources they can do anything": true, but then we have to be able to migrate all of those resources.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[diamondsw]

Actually, I will look at that. However, Visio is a very polished program (text printing aside - grrrr), and the shapesheet infrastructure works well. The automation is (at least for our group) a key feature.

Now, Visio was only an example - I'm sure various groups have all their own program or other they absolutely depend on. However, as I said before, many groups without such requirements could probably migrate.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[diamondsw]

I hate to break this to you, but software development does not depend on numbers, but more on time and planning. Read up on "The Mythical Man Month" - throwing more programmers and such at it would likely slow it down rather than help. Also, IBM's vast resources are in a million different areas - everything from Java and XML to chip design, Oracle maintenance, and network engineers.

Not to mention, I personally have not been that impressed at our client applications - how many people here have used SmartSuite? Why is Notes still so woefully single-threaded (in a network-based app!)? Our server products and backend stuff is the best in the industry, but any client app like this would probably be Lotus' responsibility...

Finally, Visio was just one example that I personally use. For argument, say that we can write our own version, the automation and everything in two years. That would help our group migrate. We represent about a hundred people (maybe a couple hundred in various worldwide departments) out of hundreds of thousands of employees. When you count all other groups using Visio, who knows, maybe a few thousand (I haven't the foggiest). What about other groups and their specialized apps? I'm not being a stick in the mud, I'm injecting a dose of realism to this.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[1lus10n]

I think your CEO has a better grasp on the situation than you. And since i come from a company that is mostly windows free (Sun) I can tell you that if your company wants to do this they will accomplish it.

I would also like to point out that i never said they should use 100,000 people to migrate apps. But two years is plenty of time to migrate the important stuff, and like most corporate IT they will tell the unimportant "small" people to deal with whats available until they get around to making the app work better. Which means your "little" group doesnt mean didly squat and if they want you migrated then migrated you shall be. weather you guys like it or not. And i hope lots of people over at IBM are stubborn about this and quit, I know lots of people who would love your job.

I also would like to point out that i proposed the solution that IBM will probably take: pay an OSS company or a small integration company money to write the app for them. this is what most people have done when migrating something from windows to linux.

the reality of the situation is that your CEO probably took a look at the bottom line and said something to the effect of "whats cheaper long term" and made the decision based on that.

And several hundreds of people running several hundreds of different little proprietary ($$$) apps will lead to $$$$$$$$$$$. If they migrate now they can get off the upgrade bandwagon and save a ton of money long term. Since IBM is profitable they have the ability to plan long term without sacrificing the "whole cow" so to speak.

Loss

[Anonymous Coward]

This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools...

Now hold on there! I'm pretty sure Linux has web access. ;-P

hmm... why not use their own hardware....

[Anonymous Coward]

namely apple G5s...?

Re:hmm... why not use their own hardware....

[geekee]

Ummm. IBM makes pcs as well as workstations that now run linux based on their power chips. They're not likely to pay Apple money to buy hardware they already make. Also, since IBM is pushing Linux for customers, it would look strange if they were using MacOS internally.

Re:hmm... why not use their own hardware....

[Slugworth01]

Who do you think is making a portion of the newest Athlon processors some of us are drooling over? I'll give you a hint, a number of them say "Made in East Fishkill, NY" inside.

An IBMer also told me they are doing a lot of work with Operton-based SUSE servers.

Re:hmm... why not use their own hardware....

[toddestan]

Yeah, I bet those Cyrix/IBM 6x86 systems are starting to get a bit dated.

Re:hmm... why not use their own hardware....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Also, since IBM is pushing Linux for customers, it would look strange if they were using MacOS internally.

Who said anything about MacOS? The parent just suggested they could use the G5 hardware. In the end, it's probably cost that kills the idea. Most people don't need a G5 to be productive. Intel is cheap and commodity, easy to replace and maintain. I suppose they'd probably use AMD crap though, throwing reliability right out the window. Funny how they probably wouldn't mind higher support costs as long as hardware costs are lower. If you desire x86, go Intel or go home!

Enemies ... ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with m5shiv casting this as "the enemy of my enemy"? Is is so unreasonable to think IBM would move to a Linux desktop purely on its practical or philisophical merits rather than the notion of the secondary effects of market share? ... gotta chill on this whole "battle to the death" theme, we're bigger and better than that.

IBM Profiting from free labor

[aml666]

Does anyone else think it's a bit "wrong" for IBM to be profiting from the work of well meaning volunteers?

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[kjd]

No.

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[Malc]

What are you talking about? It's a two way street: IBM has also contributed a lot to he open source world.

If those well meaning volunteers had not wanted others to use and perhaps even profit from their work, they wouldn't have released it under the GPL, would they?

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Besides, it benefits linux.

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else think it's a bit "wrong" for IBM to be profiting from the work of well meaning volunteers?

When those voluntees intentionally and consciously gave their work away, was there any qualification on who, when, and where could use their work? Do you mean to suggest that the creators of the open source applications to be used by IBM ethically deserve monetary compensation for their work? ... do you truly understand the notion of open source?

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Since anybody can do exactly what IBM is doing, what's the problem?

Could IBM be profiting because *gasp* they deliver better service?

Let the free market do it's magic. The GPL/BSD and other free licenses are creating a free market in software again.

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[Anonymous Coward]

From IBM's perspective, it's a great deal. Free "as in beer" software and all they need to do is donate some money to OSDL once in a while. As long as hardware companies want to avoid paying SCO or MS for sw, Linus and friends will always have a stream of donations.

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[WindBourne]

No. Unless I was MS or SCO, I would think great as long as it is a 2-way street.

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[ShinmaWa]

Does anyone else think it's a bit "wrong" for IBM to be profiting from the work of well meaning volunteers?

Do you feel it is a bit "wrong" for you to be able to benefit from all the work that IBM has put into open source projects?

IBM has made a LOT of contributions to the Linux kernel (In fact, I think I might have something about a lawsuit that had something to do with this...)

IBM also has made many contributions to the Apache Web Server, Apache Jakarta projects, Apache XML projects, PHP, Mozilla.org, etc, etc.

Let's not forget Jikes, Eclipse, SWT, etc, etc.

A list of 82 open source projects that IBM is actively involved in can be found here. This is only a SUBSET of the open source projects IBM is working on.

Kind of like Sun and Staroffice

[Xconnect]

It'd be interesting to find out how that turned out. It would give IBM a good indicator of the kind of resistance that their employees would put up.

You're off by a factor of about a gazillion...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the business reason probably has something to do with Longhorn shipping 2006ish, and avoiding paying an upgrade fee to MS for desktops for over 300,000 employees worldwide. Even if the upgrade costs them just $79 and they only have to upgrade 100,000 computers, they could still save a cool $7.9 million by switching to a Linux desktop.

Add in the cost of training 300,000 morons to use a new operating system, the cost of Network Administrators performing those 300,000 horizontal "upgrades" from Windows to Linux, and the resulting loss in employee productivity after 300,000 users have been saddled with an inferior desktop, and the savings start to look more like Negative $7.9 Billion.

I'd write it up American Express "Priceless" style, but I've got other things to do.

PS: And please don't give me that crap about how Linux is ready for the desktop. It's not.

IBM : Past, Present, Future?

[EngMedic]

I remember a time when IBM was regarded with as much animosity as Microsoft is now -- perhaps even more so, but for different reasons. More recently, the geek-public opinion of IBM has begun to shift towards neutrality and an uneasy understanding -- where do we see IBM's role and public opinion going in the future, especially with their (seemingly) wholehearted adoption of open-source technologies?

Re:IBM : Past, Present, Future?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM has survived because it's products are driven by technology - not marketing. Electric typewriters. The IBM PC. OS/2. Thinkpad. Some of their products haven't been great successes, but the computing world would still be in the dark ages without them.

If they were marketing driven (as Microsoft is) - they would probably be dead.

And like somebody who's been to the top and back, they now understand that they have to play nice and get along well with others - or they will suffer at the hands of the competition (which at one time was Compaq).

It's what causes them to use their giant patent library (that covers just about every area of modern computing) mostly only for defense - they're pretty much invulnerable to attacks but they'll only create enemies if they try and wipe neutral competitors off the face of the earth (as Microsoft refused to learn and SCO is finding out).

At least, that's how I think about it.

how strange would it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

to see an OSX-like unixized OS/3 Warp ... if only they'd done OS/2 Warp as a linux-based product back then.

Re:how strange would it be?

[WindBourne]

Actually, I worked at IBM when Uncle lou took over. It came close to knifing os/2 and releaseing the source code back then. Might have been interesting to see what would have happened had IBM done that.

(-1, Uninformative, shameless plug)

[Anonymous Coward]

Current CEO is the Linux geek...

[curious.corn]

He shure looks like one!
Jokes apart, Gerstner put this guy on top and it's the one that managed the first sniffing ceremonies towards Linux. Do I see a pattern? Companies on the point of extinction like Apple and IBM (big companies... as far as mindshare and cultural relevance) literally resurrected the moment they embraced OSS and played by it's rules. Other companies like sun are fading away and nasty M$ (Yah, troll me... I'm spelling is M$... yes, I'm biased) is yapping in fear. Folks, it's our time. Old PHBs are retiring to Florida's golf resorts, the evangelized decision makers are making space for the new illuminati... I hate to say it, actually I'm not pleased by the "feast or fast" attitude of this industry, but the cosmological pendulum is swinging our way (I just hope I won't be put aside as these fools are today).

Re:Current CEO is the Linux geek...

[jc42]

Yah; and with IBM and Sun jumping onto the linux bandwagon, it's about time that we start seriously working on the system that, 10 or 20 years from now, will start pushing linux aside.

We wouldn't to be responsible for another monoculture, now would we?

Of course, there's always iTron ...

Re:Current CEO is the Linux geek...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Folks, it's our time.

Just keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, I suggest you do a job availability comparison of Linux vs Windows admin/programming jobs on Monster.com.

Re:Current CEO is the Linux geek...

[curious.corn]

Noone will ever read this but here it is for the books...
all my friends that have graduated (sigh, I'll be the last) have repeatedly told me (a notourious linux geek... and Apple customer BTW) that they see Linux just about anywhere. Servers, IDS (even SUN stuff... paid thrugh the nose... just tailored HW & custom .pl scripts), Firewalls, database backends, and web caches... here in Italy every PHB is an M$ zealot, but when engineers close the doors and get the job dune it's Linux... and I'm not talking about small "Cobalt rack" LAMP arrays... govermental...) actually I'm damn happy about my Linux expertise... it'll be a very good checkmark on my resume... thank you.

Howz bouts Lotus Office Suite?

[o517375]

I think IBM may want to port Lotus Office Suite to Linux, esp if their own execs will be using Linux. That is, IBM execs need Lotus Office Suite, right? I wonder why it hasn't been ported already? Call me a bit cynical, but Open Office, Koffice, et al have been around for a while and where has IBM been?

Signed,
Joe,
------
Use Linux as desktop and server both at home and at work, since 1997

Re:Howz bouts Lotus Office Suite?

[tsaler]

I think this is a really good idea. It puts a bit of competition in there against OpenOffice, a suite which I like but I find to be... a bit too slow for my tastes (is it the Java? I don't know), and I think it would be nice to see those two suites duel for control over, basically, the office/publishing market on Linux desktops.

I think this is a fantastic idea by IBM. I will be buying one of the IBM Linux desktops, I bet, if they're priced reasonably (that's a big if, especially for IBM). Then again, if it was priced reasonably, I'd buy an AIX desktop from them. :P

Re:Howz bouts Lotus Office Suite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. No. Smartsuite is dead. It hasn't been updated in over three years and IBM is migrating away from it.

Sun

[ValourX]

Well, at Sun they run Solaris on everything except for cross-platform testing and development. I'm kind of surprised that IBM would use anything other than what they're selling to their customers... especially since it would be cheaper to do that than to buy licenses from Microsoft, Sun, or someone else.

-Jem

Re:Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM =does= sell Windows to its customers.

Re:Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm kind of surprised that IBM would use anything other than what they're selling to their customers...

Uh...dude, guess what, we sell Windows to our customers (as well as AIX, OS/400, OS/390, z/OS, etc) and we use all those OSes (and of course Linux) internally.

What are they replacing?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess this means they won't be using OS/2 on the desktop anymore.

Better quote

[Anonymous Coward]

This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools with open standards based equivalents.

So what the hell is the OS replacement for productivity?

Kbump?

The replacement for web access?

Nah, you got me stumped.

OK, OK what about viewing tools?

Well I guess that's more the Mac OS route.

So silly.

[twitter]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design.

Pththth-fit, wrong-o. The whole point of real openly published standards is to avoid the need for software design. While IBM has made real contributions to free code, this is a cost saving move.

...without losing much cross-platform compatibility.

If by "cross-platform" you mean it will run all the old Microsoft crap they paid for, they have already done that. Running legacy windoze was part of the Munich deal. No one has to lose anything to move to enjoy the blessings of software liberty. If you mean talk to whatever Bill Gates pulls out of his ass for next year, the answer will always be no. The question is now why would anyone want to try. Non-standard is about to die the misserable death it deserves and all applications and data will enjoy the real cross platform deployment that is the promise of SOFTware.

other large organizations with widescale Windows deployments, where a few lightly-customized Win2k images might be the most they can currently support.

The reason we are here is because no one can afford the costs and pitfalls of the uncustomized versions.

Re:So silly.

[kjd]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design.

Pththth-fit, wrong-o. The whole point of real openly published standards is to avoid the need for software design. While IBM has made real contributions to free code, this is a cost saving move.

No need to slobber. I don't mean to indicate they'll design all sorts of neat-o proprietary internal software to slather on top of the OS (they seem to be leaning towards web-based J2EE apps for that sort of thing), but they will be able to pretty easily distribute the OS per their design, and have the skills on hand to battle any major problems.

When discussing desktop Linux with user-facing IT managers, a lot of them have hesitated because of distribution issues. They feel MS makes it easy for them to distribute custom-built OS images on a wide scale, compared to e.g. Redhat. I don't have much experience with distributing Windows desktops on a large scale, so I'm not sure how they really compare.

Non-standard is about to die the misserable death it deserves and all applications and data will enjoy the real cross platform deployment that is the promise of SOFTware.

I hope so too.

Re:So silly.

[buysse]

They apparently don't realize that you can bloody well use an imaging tool like Ghost for UNIX as well -- not optimally, to be sure, but it can be done.

Based on what I remember, most of them work at low levels with NTFS or FAT and don't like other filesystems so well. This can be worked around -- image it to the smallest partition size that works for the install. Blow it on to the much larger disk. A few careful first-boot scripts that expand the filesystem to fill the disk (using a FS like ReiserFS and the LVM) and you're set.

Hell, you don't even need to license Ghost -- just bloody use a netboot or CD to load a simple UNIX, create a partition table with the appropriately sized filesystems, and blow the image on with 'gzip -dc image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda1; mount /dev/hda1 /target; chroot /target; lilo'

Not to mention using something like Redhat's kickstart...

Re:So silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never had a job, have you?

But ...

[altp]

... OS/2 was good. ;-)

According to Microsoft math...

[blixel]

According to Microsoft math, this is going to cost IBM a fortune. Pretty funny isn't it.

Notes , organizer. Quicken

[WindBourne]

My father has tried moving to Linux several time (home use). In each time, it was like of Lotus organizer and Quicken that moved him back. Also, I have known a number of companies that will not move because IBM has not moved Notes.

If IBM is serious, they will help port (or offer incentives) to companies such as Quicken to move. Mostly, they will simply move their own stuff.

Re:Notes , organizer. Quicken

[bstadil]

If IBM is serious, they will help port (or offer incentives) to companies such as Quicken

Yes, I am sure most of IBM's bookkeeping stuff is done on Quicken. They are probably thinking about upgrading to Quickbook if their growth continues.

Re:Notes , organizer. Quicken

[ballwall]

What we really need is TurboTax. I can see this being tough though, even the windows one has problems. For some reason it doesn't these 10+ digit values I keep putting in. "Are you sure you meant billion?"

Re:All we need now is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

best of all... as it's on a linux filesystem - cygdos could delete itself cleanly! (if only windows would do that more often)

Release the...

[Howard Beale]

WorkPlace Shell!!!

Will IBM make a desktop distro?

[failedlogic]

Sun has already invested money and resources for its own Java Desktop System.

IBM has invested resources to developing the Linux kernel. Will IBM also develop its own desktop system? If so, how will it be different from the competition? Will they contribute their code (some or all) to the Linux community under a GPL'd licence? Will it conform to some sort of formal standards? What of the system architecture? Will we see PPC IBM branded desktop computers and/or will it work on Wintel architectures?

Nope

[2nd Post!]

They have as much right to use this as anyone else does. It's the definition of the GPL and BSD licenses, isn't it?

Especially if they roll in bug fixes, enhancements, and new distributions (IBM Linux? Blue Linux?)

Secret formula for success

[jasonfncsu]

1) Get screwed by Microsoft 2) Get sued by SCO 3) Switch your business to linux desktops 4) ???? 5) Profit!

funny you should say that...

[Anonymous Coward]

PS: And please don't give me that crap about how Linux is ready for the desktop. It's not.

I've been reading Slashdot for years, and I've been wanting to give Linux a try. Yesterday, I downloaded Mepis and burned it onto a CD to use as a Linux startup disk. This disk contains a full debian-based installation, plus all the basic apps you could want. The idea is that you can boot it in with any reasonably current computer and get a good idea if Linux offers enough to be ready for your desktop.

I'm a writer, and not a hugely technical person. And I've never had a spare computer and the time to install Linux. But with this Mepis disk, I was able to take Linux for a spin on my Vaio, leaving XP fully intact, and without there being any chance of messing up my system.

And I gotta tell you, Linux on the desktop is ready for prime time. Booting from my Mepis disk, I was soon toying around with OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc. And none of this took any configuration work on my part. My mouse, usb flash drive, and even my Nvidea display drivers all pre-loaded automatically. And I was connected to my cable modem with zero configuration -- from the moment I loaded Mozilla, I was online.

I could not have been more impressed. So as to the parent post's claim, "And please don't give me that crap about how Linux is ready for the desktop. It's not." -- I beg to differ. I think Linux is ready for prime time. I fell in love with Mepis in the two hours I played with it, and my next computer will be bought without a cent going to Microsoft.

Re:funny you should say that...

[Fnkmaster]

Agreed - distributions like MEPIS that make the user experience the first and foremost concern ARE ready for prime time. The problem has been the more popular mainstream distros, like Red Hat and Mandrake, have not achieved anywhere near the same level of desktop usability. Don't get me wrong, Mandrake is great once you get it working and tweaked to your heart's content, and URPMI and the related apps are pretty much superior to anything else out there (one you get proper repositories with useful software set up - argh, again, not quite there out of the box), but their zealot-like refusal to include out of the box NVidia drivers guarantees that it won't work on a massive percentage of new PCs out of the box (Mandrake 9.2 won't start X period with the built-in nv driver on my NForce2/GeForce4Ti desktop at all for reasons unknown to me).

So when people have experiences like trying to install Mandrake and they find that their network card doesn't work and their graphics card doesn't work out of the box, and the desktop font configuration out of the box is STILL heinous, it's not surprising they conclude that Linux still isn't ready for the desktop (I won't even address Red Hat since they've given up on a desktop distro entirely - who knows how the Fedora project will shape up). MEPIS and similar projects need to become the mainstream desktop flavors of Linux. I think Texstar's PCLinuxOS also stands to kick some serious ass, the Mandrake-based equivalent of MEPIS.

As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

This can't be so unexpected. They have a nice Linux commercial on tv, featuring (among others) Muhammad Ali advising an attentive little boy: "Speak your mind, and don't back down." So, IBM switching to Linux desktops....not so unexpected. My Daughter loves the linux commercial, It seems to equate the use of linux with all the worlds best in their respective fields of expertice. As though God himself runs linux, (provided by IBM, of course.)
Really, the commercial is so good, it brings tears to your eyes, especially if you are a long-suffering linux advocate of sorts in a sea of micro-idiots.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[JamesOfTheDesert]

seems to equate the use of linux with all the worlds best in their respective fields of expertice.

See, now, that's funny, because, to me, that commercial seems to equate Linux with a dopey sci-fi movie or one-season TV show.

What it *doesn't* equate to is the fleeting suspicion that anybody in the commercial knows anything about computers, software, operating systems, or OSS. I mean, they *might*, but you'd never know it from the commercial

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[AndroidCat]

They've had good commercials for a long time. "Flying cars" etc.

Now they just need something with impact. How about a penguin bursting into an auditorium full of Microsoft drones arranged 1984 or Triumph of Will style. Then the penguin smashes a giant Windows desktop screen.

Now that would be different eh!

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

seems to equate the use of linux with all the worlds best in their respective fields of expertice.

See, now, that's funny, because, to me, that commercial seems to equate Linux with a dopey sci-fi movie or one-season TV show.

What it *doesn't* equate to is the fleeting suspicion that anybody in the commercial knows anything about computers, software, operating systems, or OSS. I mean, they *might*, but you'd never know it from the commercial

Erm, the commercial is ABOUT OSS. Think about it. They say "we have this kid, his name is Linux" Linux learns everyday from the foremost experts around the world. As Linux grows he becomes stronger, faster, better, smarter. Linux absorbs everything around him. That is the essence of OSS, and that is what happens in the commercial. The idea is to get people who do not understand software to understand this fundamental fact of OSS.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kevcol]

This can't be so unexpected. They have a nice Linux commercial on tv, featuring (among others) Muhammad Ali advising an attentive little boy

Until you see the same little boy running around like an ADD afflicted monkey in a Chuck E. Cheese commercial like I did.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Twin suicide bombings outside the SCO and Microsoft campuses rocked the United States today, killing 135 people.

Witnesses reported hearing cries of "Linus Akbar!" (Linus Is Great) before removing Comdex jackets revealing several hundred pounds of explosives covering gigantic flabby bellies.

Film at 11.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[jocknerd]

That commercial reminds me of the chess playing kid on The X-Files.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

Exactly. Islam is being equated to Linux. This is something I don't want Linux to be associated with.

You do realize that Muhammed Ali was a pacifist who went to jail rather than have to kill another human being, and that he credited Islam for this conviction? I think not all followers of Islam are the same....

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Abreu]

You sir, are an idiot.

Islam is a peaceful religion that has unfortunately inspired some dorks to become terrorists.

Same as christianism has done before...

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Ali was a pacifist

Ali physically beats other men into submission for millions of dollars.

If he is a pacifist, I'd hate to see the warmongers from his clan...

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

>>Ali was a pacifist

Ali physically beats other men into submission for millions of dollars.

If he is a pacifist, I'd hate to see the warmongers from his clan...

Well, actually he does not do a lot of boxing nowadays. Parkinsons will do that to you.

Boxing is a sport. The participants in a boxing ring are fighting based one defined rules and are there of their own free will. I have never seen evidence that Ali ever caused more damage to an opponent than was necessary to win the fight. Likewise, boxers are usually not fighting to settle a dispute, they are playing a game.

Ali did not as far as I know ever ever advocate violence to solve problems in his life or the world. Yes, boxing is a violent sport like football and rugby, etc. But it is a sport and a game, not a violent means of resolving conflict.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>What it *doesn't* equate to is the fleeting suspicion that anybody in the commercial knows anything about computers, software, operating systems, or OSS.

I understand your point, but that is a really ugly sentence.

Posts with sentences like the one quoted, rarely get modded up.

Instead of "telling us" what it doesn't equate to(i.e. you know the facts)...tell us that "you never got the impression that anyone knew squat about computers"

you were ok with the first sentence, because of the disclaimer "because, to me". That saves it.

your last sentence though was "I am the sole owner of the truth"...and very "as it said, as it shall be done"ish.

thats guaranteed to get you modded down, or at least not modded up.

nothing like offering a smart ass, poorly phrased, opinion at the end...as a fact.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, i thought it was funny

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[flink]

Or the penguin could bust through a brick wall into an auditorium full of kids 1984 Kool-Aid style. The penguin holds up a server and shouts "Oh Yeah!"

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kazem]

People like you make me really mad. But then I have to remember that you're only ignorant. The terrorists and Talebans of the world don't actually follow Islam. They say they do, sure, but none of their questionable practices are written anywhere in the Quran. In fact, I do not know of a single nation in the world today that follows Islam in its true form. Islam, unlike other reigions, has a secular component too, describing how business and law are to be conducted. This is to be done fairly and equally, men and women.

Then again, all religion sucks, but if you're going to put it down, know what you're putting down and atleast know what to call it.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Muslim and I can't stand fundamentalists. I know a lot of Muslims that feel the same way too. Do we have to constantly come out and say we are sorry and that we don't believe in violence? I mean really, when some poor Iraqi kids get bombed you don't go out in public and scream "I'm sorry" do you. You sleep like a baby I imagine and don't think of it twice. Most Americans would say "eh, war is hell."

Another thing that I can't stand is the fact that America is keeping all the dictators in the Arab world in power. People who live in Saudi don't like Osama because they believe his way of doing things is the right way but since he is anti Saudi-clan and America for keeping them in power they feel they are fighting the same fight.

You got life twisted man, I'm not going to sound off and apologies every time some fucker blows himself up. Just because we share the same religious beliefs doesn't mean we see the world the same. And if you assume we are the same since we are both Muslims, well then, your just an idiot.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[YetAnotherDave]

>> Exactly. Islam is being equated to Linux. This is something I don't want Linux to be associated with.

ever hear of the crusades???

a fine example of another religion (with very similar roots) which states (in a nutshell) that people should be nice to each other, which a few people who claim to follow its teachings use as an excuse to do nasty things other people.

Suicide bombing is no more a tenet of the muslim faith than wholesale rape and plundering is of the christian faith...

I know I'm feeding the trolls here, but this rediculous, ignorant anti-muslim raving pisses me off...

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[AnonymousNoMore]

This post's parent was actually funny but does not get modded up while it's sibling makes light of homicide bombings and gets modded funny.

That's just fucking wrong.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[slacky99]

Dragged into court stripped of boxing licences ,not allowed to fight in and out of the U.S., but not put in jail. Supreme Court found against the gov't. "No Vietnamese ever called me..........."

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, those nuts never had control of the religion -- they're just the ones that end up in the news the most. The other billion or so guys tend to be a bit more boring.

And well, if I were watching George Bush from outside of western society when he reads from the bible and then goes into a call to war, well, I'd say it's really pretty scary too -- except he's actually been more successful on his crusades and has more dangerous weapons. One might assume that this is the Christian way but I suspect that most Christians might have something to say to that. ;-)

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to note - many of us (Americans) agree with you about the Saudi government. I'd love to see them gone and replaced with a democratic government, or at least something more responsive to the needs of the people, so they don't feel like they _have to_ turn to fundamentalist Islam. The problem is that if you just pushed them aside, what would likely replace them would be far worse. I appreciate that there are plenty of bright, thoughtful, progressive Muslims out there, I've met quite a few of them living in New York, and in college in Boston.

However, you have to acknowledge that there are Islamic countries where the VAST majority of the populace is so far from well educated, thoughtful, or progressive that just pushing aside the status quo for raw democracy would be a very bad idea. Hell, we have so many idiots here in the US, our democracy barely functions. And we have a far better educational system than most countries (Europe largely excepted, they generally kick our ass in the primary/high school level education).

I think Turkey is a great example of this. The Turkish government (which admittedly has done some nasty things to some of their Kurdish residents) only stays in power because the military keeps the peace and enforces the Constitution. With unadulterated democracy, the people of Turkey would simply vote away their rights, and put in place a fundamentalist government that would be a true tyranny of the majority, in the worst sense of the word.

So you can rue the US supporting less-than-perfect governments all you want, but what you should really be doing is working to make the Muslim world as a whole more tolerant and well-educated, capable of handling the rights and responsibilities that come with democracy. And you need to look inward to see the source of tyranny in the Islamic world - it's mostly not the US. Tyrannical regimes like Iran are in no way backed by the US. Iraq - quite tyrannical, hadn't received support from the US since the early 80s. Palestinian Authority - arguably quite tyrannical, not backed by the US. Kuwait - backed by the US. Are they tyrannical? Turkey - it's definitely arguable, I see this as benevolent tyranny for the benefit of all. Saudi Arabia is one particularly unpleasant example and I don't think you should come to such drastic conclusions about the evil US government from the problem created by one very fucked up country

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Denver_80203]

You sir, are an idiot. Islam is a peaceful religion that has unfortunately inspired some dorks to become terrorists.

yes yes... I see the kindness radiating from you post.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[pirhana]

DISCLAIMER: I am living in a country next to saudi for more than 2 years.

I am sorry to tell you that your assumptions and understandings are WRONG in a big way. First all these gulf countries are EQUALLY tyrannical. In saudi, its more conspicuous because its the biggest. Bahrain is the smallest of all these countries and believe me for this, its EQUALLY tyrannical. In none of these countries you cannot utter a word against these regimes. You dont have any freedom to express your views openly. The rule is a classic blend of monarchy and feudelism. Members of the royal families just share the country themselves. Its the same in Saudi, Bahrain , Kuwait and all the gulf countries. There is NO difference in the magnitude in any country including Kuwait. You know what ? Iran, a country which is offen treated as a tyranny, has MANY of these rights granted to the people . Its not ruled by some royal families. Nobody is taking the wealth away from people because of his family status or any other status(religion or anything). You have access to the books and magazines which widely criticize the governments and even Islam(needless to say these are not possible in other gulf countries). There is protest going on against the government. I am not saying things are perfect in Iran. But the level of freedom, democracy and other values are far more and better in Iran than any other gulf countries. Its a fact which the western media conveniently forget and ignore. Look at Turkish government. Its the same. They are Islamic but they are in synchrony with freedom and other progressive values(ofcourse in the limited Turkish setup and military constraints). Islam is a religion followed by people of these countries. Its a fact. And they want it to be there in their life. Unlike people in the western countries, they think their reliogion as something comprehensive and applicable to every aspect of life. Just because people in the western countries are not like this, doesnt mean that everyone is like that. Its a myth that what is going to come in these brutal dictatorship regimes are worse than this. Because there is no fact to substantiate this claim and any country which has gone away from these dictatorship regimes (e.g Iran) has more freedom and more democracy. And the more people stick with Islam(or any othe religion) its better as all the religions are preaching good things only.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[saden1]

In reply to your reply.

Please name some of those VAST majority of Islamic countries. I would say they are quite knowledgeable in terms of world affairs and politics. Just because they haven't received formal education doesn't make them more susceptible to follow the wrong path. People know the difference between right from wrong without the need for formal education. I dare say it is an instinct we are all born with. What people in the Arab world feel is in deferent and not deep hatred. They feel no one cares about them so why should they care? Education doesn't make one peaceful. As far as Arab needing to embrace the west, well shit, have you been to an Arab country? All you see is American goods in stores and Hollywood junk on TVs. Think they know more about America/Americans than Americans know about them.

Yes I agree that despots and fundamentalist will rise to power, but every nation must go through growing pains. The only way to free people is to simply say "We will not deal with you and we will leave you alone." This is specially true in the Islamic world since "Peace through lack of Interaction" is mentioned in Quran as one of the means to accomplish peace. One prime example of this tactic working is Libya and Qaddafi. Libya felt isolated and so it had to change its way. I'm sure Qaddafi was feeling the heat because of the poor conditions.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think about it, after Ali became muslim, he changed up his fighting style. Late in his career he started using the unique rope-a-dope style. This style has the boxer on the ropes with his guard up, being completely defensive yet passive. You let the other guy get tired, bounce back off the ropes, and win.

I guess being muslim means you let someone else kick your ass until they get sleepy then you explode in their face.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Boxing is a sport.
So is war.

The participants in a boxing ring are fighting based on defined rules and are there of their own "free will". [scarequotes added.]
In war participants fight based on defined rules, and are there of their own "free will" -- non-participants (civilians, those not fighting of their own will) are excluded from the sport.

["Wait, what if there is a draft? In that case it's not the soldier's own free will!"
Yes it is. They could have chosen to sit it out in jail. Much as it is MY choice to work to work for minimum wage, even if the only other actions I'm capable of undertaking are resorting to crime and starving.

Also: But [Boxing] is a sport and a game, not a violent means of resolving conflict.
YES IT IS. If money exchanges hands in conjunction with the sport/game, then it is a means of resolving conflict -- between one party's material interests and another's.]

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[hey]

Yes, I love the commerical.
In computer history its right up there with the 1984 Mac announcement that played in the Super Bowl.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we've all heard of the Crusades -- but Christianity got it out of its system several hundred years ago. OTOH, Islam is conducting a "Crusade" now in the 21st century.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Steve Franklin]

Then the search for nonexistent WMDs in Iraq isn't a crusade? I never would have guessed....

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[B'Trey]

Islam as an organized religion is defined by it's senior leadership. And much of its senior leadership either explicitly or implicitly supports terrorism.

You're absolutely correct that Christianity has been equally culpable during parts of its history. During the Inquisition and the Crusades, Christianity as an organization was an evil force, just as Islam as an organization is currently an evil force.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the teachings of Christianity or Islam are evil, nor that all who seek to follow those teachings are evil. But if you want people to stop calling Islam evil, then take back your organization from the fundamentalists. Otherwise, accept that the gestalt that is Islam has been perverted.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmmm, nothing especial but just wanted to say isn't it called "Persian gulf" not just "gulf"?

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the ugly, hairy wifes doing that bizarre sychronized grieving thing.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Threni]

>Islam as an organized religion is defined by it's senior leadership. And much of
>its senior leadership either explicitly or implicitly supports terrorism.

Islam doesn't have a `senior leadership`, fuckwit.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are an idiot.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[FictionPimp]

"Suicide bombing is no more a tenet of the muslim faith than wholesale rape and plundering is of the christian faith..."

ummm. have you seen the news...thats what catholics do, rape and plunder small boys.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really truly believe that Islam really needs the equivalent of a protestant reformation.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[FroMan]

Developers! Developers! Developers!

I don't watch much TV, so I have not seen the comercial. But did the "little boy" look like an over weight middle aged man?

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[renderhead]

If I had mod points, I would give them to you. Thank you for providing some context and a perspective from someone that has actually experienced these countries in person. Many of us enjoy writing our own dissertations about how the world "is" and how it "ought to be" without ever experiencing it firsthand. I appreciate your insight.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[t0ny]

Ah, so in other words, the only products which improve over time are OSS products.

Ya, that makes sense :rolleyes:

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[B'Trey]

Well, the depth and insight of your reply leaves me a bit speechless but I'll try to formulate a reply.

Islam has many senior leaders. It may not have a formal organization with a single senior leader, as does the Roman Catholic Church, but there are definitely clerics whom a great many Islamic followers listen to. A few of them have come out with strong anti-terrorism statements. Others have come out with strong pro-terrorism statements. Many more have taken no stand at all. In an issue like this, to refuse to take strong opposition is to implicitly support the cause. Until and unless the majority of Islamic leaders firmly and unequivocally renounce terrorism and those who support it, Islam as a whole will be guilty of supporting terrorism even if individual followers oppose it.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[ajakk]

Also, the vast majority of the Catholic faith support the "rape and plunder" of small boys while, almost no Muslims support suicide bombing. Or not...

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Azureash]

I have an idea...why doesn't everyone stop basing their lives on the meta-physical belief systems of 1300, 2000, and 4000-year old goat-herder societies, and start using their brains. Then maybe we could be discussing IBM on the desktop, instead of having an uninformed debate about theology/mythology.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[shreak]

Boxing is a game because boxing has rules, War has rules so war is a game: False analogy

A person can maintain free will by being imprisoned: Conflicting Conditions

If money exchanges hands in conjunction with game, then that game is a violent means of resolving conflict. Too Broad

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Boxing as a non-violent sport

You are punching people in the face.

Come on, at some level they love it. Not because it's a sport but becuase you are punching people in the face. Get over your self-righteousness.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[jxs2151]

Erm, you are aware that the Crusades were in direct response to Muslim Invasions right?

...ignorant anti-muslim raving pisses me off...

Yeah, I know. Ingorant anti-Christian raving pisses me off.

Next time try actually studying the subject in question, you'll be better off for it.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rwesterv]

Of course, the quick demise of the Taliban and the Baath party governments, when they p*ssed us off enough, might have had an influence, too. If I'd been him, I'd certainly have taken steps to get my country off any list of 'future troublemakers to be handled' countries. Interestingly enough, North Korea suddenly dropped it's demand for talking only with the US just recently, as well. Of course, they might have been a bit closer to the top of the list than Libya... :) As someone said elsewhere; "Walk softly and carry a big stick" works - once you swing the stick a time or two just to show what it's there for.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[johnnyb]

"Ali did not as far as I know ever ever advocate violence to solve problems in his life or the world"

Yes he did. Needs money - beats people up on national TV - gets millions.

I understand that what you are saying is that the only targets are willing participants, but that is the case in many violent conflicts (think barfight).

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to tell you this, but if you scroll down, you'll find that the entire thread is a religious debate. No sooner do we get away from Islam than someone breaks out the old KDE/GNOME flamewar. Then we have some tool who thinks he's God's Gift to UI Design who has a laundry list of "Shalts" that will allow an IBM desktop to be fruitful and multiply. Top of his list of desktop commandments? Ditch X. You may as well start talking about guns or abortions right now, because it doesn't get better soon.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[EnderWiggnz]

homicide bombings, eh?

well i'll just label your ass "unbiased"

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Threni]

> Well, the depth and insight of your reply leaves me a bit speechless but I'll
> try to formulate a reply

I am correct though - you can't fault that aspect of my reply.

> In an issue like this, to refuse to take strong opposition is to implicitly
> support the cause

You are aware of the worldwide laughter and condemnation which followed Bush's `with us or against us` speech, right?

Try reading some Chomsky before you start getting too worked up with painting millions and millions of Muslims as terrorists.

> Until and unless the majority of Islamic leaders
> a great many Islamic followers
> Islam as a whole

Where did you learn that generalising was helpful? There are millions of Muslims, all of whom have a mind of their own. Who they listen to and how they respond to statements from Islamic clerics, politicians, western leaders, the media etc etc varies from person to person. All the Muslims I've spoken to seem fairly similar to me (I am an Athiest) in their views and opinions - they detest violence, terrorism and murder, condemn the 9-11 attacks, and condemn the results of Americas foreign policy in places such as Israel and the Sudan.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[GreyPoopon]

Ah, so in other words, the only products which improve over time are OSS products.

Er, no. It implies that while other products improve over time, Linux has the advantage of a more diverse group of experts to feed it. The reasoning is the same as that used by many students to choose a large multi-cultural university instead a small unheard-of community college. Sure, you'll improve yourself at both, but which experience do you think offers the best opportunities? OK, so maybe most students choose for the party factor instead, but you get my point. :-)

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, your post just oozes self-superiority.

You mention God, but I think He values humility. You may want to work on that.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful! First the Muslim calls you an idiot, then he blows up your son on a bus.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[GreyPoopon]

I think not all followers of Islam are the same....

This is totally off topic, but I completely agree, and these days I'm sure many of the pacifist muslims are really getting the shaft in some countries. However, it probably wouldn't hurt if the pacifist groups were a little more outspoken and downright condemning of the extremist factions that churn out the terrorists. They could probably start by publicly questioning the motives and moral condition of the clerics who encourage these kinds of actions.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should compare the New Testament with the Koran. You should also compare the life of Jesus against the life of Mohammed.

Christianity has its share of militant idiots. But it is important --for any religion-- to make a distinction between the followers and the basis of that religion. The basic concept of Christianity is forgiveness. Pick up any (non-biased) biography about Mohammed and you'll see how he advocated assasinations and military force to get rid of people who bothered him.

It's also very telling that when Mohammed originally received his revelation, he thought that it was from Satan. Unfortunately, his wife convinced him otherwise.

Certainly, there are Muslims leading peaceful lives and concentrating on the peaceful portions of the Koran, but the core value of Islam is "join or die".

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[GreyPoopon]

People like you make me really mad. But then I have to remember that you're only ignorant. The terrorists and Talebans of the world don't actually follow Islam.

You're absolutely right. The problem is that the terrorists are busy shouting out how all they do is based on their faith and death to the infidels. Since they are currently the loudest, their teachings are the perception that non-muslims get of Islam. For that matter, it's the perception that some muslims (their target audience) get as well. Perhaps if those who more closely follow the actual practices written in the Quran would speak up more -- a lot more -- perceptions would change.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[landaker]

Until you see the same little boy running around like an ADD afflicted monkey in a Chuck E. Cheese commercial like I did.

Or, if you realize that the boy is really Draco Malfoy. Slicked-back blonde-almost-white hair, smarmy-smug expression; it's him, all right.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, the Bible (or the Torah to be precise) deals with the same secular issues.
Islam LIKE other religions re-hashes that as well. What did they teach youy in school...

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[haruchai]

I'm delighted that IBM is running a Linux commercial but I felt it was too cerebral. I'd like to see something lively along the lines of Microsoft's "Start Me Up" campaign that launched Windows 95.

This Linux ad is too much like their OS/2 Warp ads with the nuns and the old Parisians, original, clever but just too subtle and dull.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the age-challenged, here's the Mac reference

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[AnonymousNoMore]

You are absolutely right. I am biased. I'm biased against people who intentionally kill civilians and are too much of a pussy to stay alive and accept the consequences of their actions. Blowing yourself up is not brave. BTW, you might notice that my post didn't imply a particular group of cowards. There have been bombings in spain, russia, greece, and a dozen other places. Is there a prejudice on your part that led you to infer that I was defaming a particular group?

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[haruchai]

Perhaps you should read this article about "The darker side of Muhammad Ali". I'm an Ali fan and have been since the age of eight but he never was as angelic as his face would suggest.

http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/06/0 6/ ali/index1.html

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[EnderWiggnz]

nah... i was just pointing out that the only asshats who use the term "homicide bombings" are those who are fox-news watching, rush-limbaugh listening neocons, who dont have a firm grasp of reality.

and yes, this means you.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[AnonymousNoMore]

would it surprise you that I agree that the fox news people are assholes and that I'd love to see limbaugh go to jail for being a drug addict simply because he preached incarceratioon over treatment?

My use of that phrase was intentional. Most societies view people who commit suicide as
victims. A person who straps on explosives and purposely kill others is a murderer, not a victim as the term "suicide bombing" might imply.

I have a pretty firm grasp on reality. Firm enough to recognize that the moderation of this threads ancestor and it's sibling trivialized a brutal act.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kevlar]

Woah there, Tiger. Don't assume that because we have freedom of religion, that some westerners don't apply their religion to every aspect of their lives, everyday.

We dislike Iran today because they are a direct threat to the security of the United States in the same way North Korea and Afghanistan is. The Saudi's are not building nuclear weapons and funding terror with state funds, unlike Iran and North Korea. I personally dislike the Saudi's and their government, but the United States is prioritizing its asshole list, as they should. The fact of the matter is that that USA doesn't give a flying rats ass about what a country does to its citizens until the country monopolizes oil production or threatens the US with some sort of terrorism. Its not our job to free the world and we do not do that until leaders of a country plan to blow up the Lincoln or Holland tunnel, like Saddam did back in '92, or when Bin Laden flew planes into the WTC. So don't try to explain to us about how we're wrong about the evils of the middle east because the fact of the matter is that we simply don't care, so long as they don't fuck with us.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[tundog]

This is to be done fairly and equally, men and women

What a load of horsesh*t. What about the women of Islam? They get shaft on a daily basis. Granted, most Isalmic regimes aren't nearly as draconian as the Taliban was, but the women still have minimal human rights at best. This is what absolutley drives me crazy about all the pro-Islam, pro-peace nuts - they always talk about how Islam is a religoin of love when in reality its a religon of 'the ends justify the means'. This is as true of mainstream Islamers as it is of terrorist variety.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Tassach]

The Saudi's are not [..] funding terror with state funds

Nope, they're just funding it with private funds. Of course, when you are talking about a member of the Saud family, the line between "state" and "private" gets pretty damn blurry. Remember that the Bin Ladins are cousins of the Sauds. Have no illusions that the vast majority of the money that paid for the 9/11 hijackers training and expenses originated in Saudi.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[dclydew]

Evil Force? Would this be different than the Evil Force that blessed weapons for the Nazi's and the Americans during WWII? Would it be the same Evil that ripped apart Bosnia, Ireland, Cheneya, and whatever small African country the Hutu and Tutsi live in?

The answer is Yes... the Evil isn't Islam or Christianity, it is the Dogma that Islam and Christianity force feed their believers.

Christians are no more or less reprehensible, they simply cover their actions with pretty clothes and fancy names. Dogma is the culprit, Dogma is the reason that Osama Bin Laden can tell people to kill themselves via a jumbo jet. Dogma is the reason that Ireland and England have spent generations destroying each other. Dogma (not just religous but also Political) is what sent thousands of US troops across the sea to stop Saddam's WMD's (whoops, I mean topple an Evil Man, yeah thats it).

Dogma is the reason Nazi's tromped through snow into killing fields of Russia. Oh and its the reason that the russian Czar and his family "bit the bullet" (hehehe, sorry about the Pun).

There is no arguing that this Dogma is worse or better than any other. One Dogma may be more violent, but all Dogmas cause rational thinking to cease. That is the worst effect of all.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[dclydew]

Actually the New Testament is more likely based on the earlier writings of the Threaputes, a sect living in Egypt about 300 years before the NT was written. (read "The Diegesis: Being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity, Never Yet Before or Elsewhere So Fully and Faithfully Set Forth" by Rev. Robert Taylor (First Printing in the late 1800's) ISBN: 1564591638)

So Islam is based (using the term loosely) on the Prophet Mohammed and his whacked view of reality. Christianity is based (using the term loosely) on a number of plagerists in the 1st century, and their whacked out view of reality. Good start all around.

Folks, the problem with all of it is that Dogma permeates both (and most other) religons. Dogma a.k.a. "I'm right, I'm the only one thats right, I know the answer to The Big Questions."

Someday, maybe, the majority of humans will upgrade their consciousness to a new level and decide that there is probably a lot more to reality than we're aware of. Until then, pitting one Dogma against the other is like the pot calling the kettle a 'God Damned Heathen Who Will Burn IN Hell For Their Pagan Ways!!!!!'

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

"Ali did not as far as I know ever ever advocate violence to solve problems in his life or the world"

Yes he did. Needs money - beats people up on national TV - gets millions.

I understand that what you are saying is that the only targets are willing participants, but that is the case in many violent conflicts (think barfight).

In a barfight people do not wear boxing gloves. Boxing is designed to cause the least amount of damage possible to the opponent. This is why the match is called if one of the fighters gets hurt, you must wear gloves, you are resitricted on where to hit people, you cannot use elbows or knees, etc etc.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kevlar]

Like I said, I don't like the Saudis, but we're picking our battles.

The Saudi govt is our little bitch for the time being, have no doubt about that.

If it were up to me, the middle east would be one big glass highway... if you catch my drift :-P

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading up on Islam, actually, and see just how much difference there is between practice and theory. Not really that dissimilar to Christianity, which in theory promotes peace and harmony, yet in practice comes up with inquisition and crusade.

At the fundamental level (as opposed to what 'fundamentalists' think is important), Islam doesn't discriminate against women. It says that both men and women should dress modestly - not that women should wear a bag over their heads. And while Mohammed believed the place of women was in the home, he also believed that they should be well educated, and responsible for managing household finances.

Similar distortion exists with terms like jihad. In origin, it simply meant that a Muslim should always strive against something - while it had connotations of a struggle against evil, it certainly wasn't advocating holy war against non-Muslims.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

Perhaps you should read this article about "The darker side of Muhammad Ali". I'm an Ali fan and have been since the age of eight but he never was as angelic as his face would suggest.

http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/06/0 6/ ali/index1.html

Well, I havent read the book but just judging from the Salon article it seems to me that its a lot of sensationalism and not a little sour grapes. Apparently the author did not like Ali or the people he portrays as buffoons, and he makes it sound like Ali was an ignorant puppet.

Now I was not alive at the time, but I have to say I had always thought that Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali were friends outside of the ring. Wasn't their relationship the model for that between Apollo and Rocky? As for not being able to write, I had never before heard the accusation that anyone wrote for Muhammed Ali. In fact he has been consistently credited with his sharp wit in being able to come up with funny remarks for the cameras.

I would not be surprised if Muhammed Ali did not know where Vietnam was. But that was his point. He said he had no reason to fight the Viet Cong and every reason to fight the white establishment. He said that the Viet Cong never called him racial slurs and denied him a seat on a bus or a hot meal in a restaurant. It is a simple argument and requires no complex knowlege of geography to understand.

No one is a perfect angel, of course. But I don't think that Muhammed Ali deserves to be painted as an evil man just to sell a book.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[aztracker1]

War doesn't have rules... the victor makes terms, and finds judgements against the loser... many people follow a code of conduct in war. doesn't mean that war itself has rules.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[quax]

Great and then we can all burn radioactive fuel in our SUVs. Your attitude nicely illustrates why the USA is all so popular in the rest of the world.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Vintermann]

True up to a point for olympic boxing. But what you see on TV is "professional boxing", where the boxing gloves are thinner and proper protective equipment is not worn. This is presumably because knockouts are more spectacular.

So-called pro boxing is illegal in many countries, which isn't so strange, considering that participants suffer from chronic concussion.

Take a look at this page for a comparison.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kevlar]

Yeah, now thats an original comment. If America felt the same way about the middle east as I do, the middle east would already be a glass parking lot.

The rest of the world doesn't like America because we have a strong, relatively stable economy and we reap its benefits.

When the "rest of the world" isn't pissing and moaning about us cleaning up other country's shit, they're begging us for some sort of aid or govt contract.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Erm, the commercial is ABOUT OSS. Think about it. They say "we have this kid, his name is Linux" Linux learns everyday from the foremost experts around the world.

Yeah, but that's bullshit. Some experts contribute to software that runs (among other OS's) on Linux. But mostly it's a range of typical geeks with free time writing softwwre to scratch an itch.

As Linux grows he becomes stronger, faster, better, smarter. Linux absorbs everything around him.

Like I said, a bad sci-fi plot. And maybe you think that's the point of the commercial, but I'm not so sure that's a common interpretation.

That is the essence of OSS, and that is what happens in the commercial. The idea is to get people who do not understand software to understand this fundamental fact of OSS.

See above. It just simply isn't true. There is a good amount of top-grade OSS, but the same is true of closed-source coprorate product.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[t0ny]

I understand what you are saying (heck, its repeated here hundreds of times every day), but I dont agree with it.

Case in point: everyone says Linux security is so much better than Windows because of OSS. But, that hasnt stopped Linux from having three high profile kernel exploits, and one of them was actually being used 'in the wild'.

The other reason I disagree is that there are only a small group of people which actually contribute to Linux; its not like every person using it donates some of their unused brainpower in some sort of metaphysical grid computing network. That means there are only a select group of people working on Linux. Just like Windows.

So, the only difference is that one is free, and one is not. And, if the 90s taught us anything, its that free stuff cant grow a competitive company. "Free" by itself doesnt do anything- you still need to have something which is competitive, because if you have money, you are willing to pay to get what you want. And Linux cant compete with what people are willing to pay for. Maybe that will improve; time will tell.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[quax]

If they hate America for the "strong, relatively stable economy", why do they not hate Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Singapore etc. just as much?

Stop kidding yourself. 9/11 wouldn't have happened without the US of A engaging in some really crappy foreign politics over the last couple of decades.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kevlar]

Japan is not a super power. The idea that Canada, France, Germany and Singapore having an economy anywhere in comparison of the United State's is a complete farce.

9/11 happenned because the United States is on top and thats what gets you the most recognition.

But if you want to bring up foreign policy over the last 2 decades, be my guest. You're referring to what exactly? Our support for Afghanistan and Iraq? Our support of Israel? Our support of Saudi Arabia? What precisely are you referring to? You could argue Saddam, but the fact of the matter is that the Arabs were begging us to prevent him from invading the Arab Peninsula.

Don't confuse Arab's hatred for Jews with the United State's foreign policies. I'm still wondering just who we've oppressed over the last 2 decades. The Vietnamese? Latin Americans?

Please clarify.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[quax]

According to these numbers [studentsoftheworld.info] the combined GDP of France and Germany is not that far behind Japan. I also picked Singapore because in terms of GDP per capita [quia.com] it is the only Asian country other than Japan that outranks the US. Given that it is a tiny city state embedded in much poorer countries it should be suffering heavily from terrorism if envy was what motivates terrorists.

I see you dismissed Japan because it is not a superpower. How do you define superpower? Is Japan missing the nukes that usually come with that status? I doubt that America having nukes is what upsets Osama.

If you define superpower as meddling in other countries' affairs I am with you. Going through your list I would just change the wording:

* Supporting the Islamic fundamentalist insurgence against the Soviet backed Afghan government to then leave the country to its own devices once the Soviets were expelled.

(Check)

* Support of Israel no matter what happens in Palestine and allowing the peace process to crumble after Rabin got shot by a fundamentalist Jewish Settler.

(Check)

* Supporting the house of Saude no matter how they run their country.

(Check)

This list is of course far from complete but I am glade to see that we actually agree on some key areas where the US foreign policy failed miserably.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[FallLine]

According to these numbers [studentsoftheworld.info] the combined GDP of France and Germany is not that far behind Japan. I also picked Singapore because in terms of GDP per capita [quia.com] it is the only Asian country other than Japan that outranks the US. Given that it is a tiny city state embedded in much poorer countries it should be suffering heavily from terrorism if envy was what motivates terrorists.

Who defined it in per capita terms? I don't think this is a good or reasonable one, but the United States is #2 in the world for per capita GDP (Japan is almost a good 10K a year less) right behind Luxemberg (#1)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_cap

The fact that Luxemberg is viewed is #1 in this just illustrates the point that it's a silly measure because they're pretty obscure for most of the world (there are a number of US companies with greater annual revenue than their entire GDP at a mere ~20 billion). Luxemberg's unique economy also allows this to occur (banking, lots foreign workers, etc)--they're not nearly as prolific in a real per capita sense though)

The United States has a far greater GDP than anyone else in absolute terms:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp

The United also exports significantly more than everyone else in absolute terms:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_exp

All of these measures are really just secondary effects of the real reason why we're so visible. We sell a lot of stuff to the world. We broadcast and sell hundreds of TV shows, movies, trademarks, and so on. We enjoy a style of living that 99% of the world can only dream about (not to mention the fact that many try to emulate this).

US policy isn't perfect, but no country is. Just because they made what was, in hindsite, a mistake does not mean that the decision makers were malicious, lazy, or stupid. Far from it. We made some tough decisions during the Cold War, but many of them were decisions that had to be made or, at least, seemed like the lesser of two evils at the time to some very smart people.

What's more you neglect to mention that both France and Germany (and much of Europe for that matter) were victims of lots of terrorism in the 70s and 80s. Also, if our supposed actions in, say, Afghanistan is the cause of Osama's resentment today then why wasn't Russia attacked? Afterall, it was their soldiers, their weapons, their tanks, and so on that killed many thousands of freedom fighters and invaded the country. I'm sorry, but the argument that US actions or inactions insofar as foreign policy goes is a sufficient cause for terrorist acts is a very poor one that doesn't hold water.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Word, my Brotha!

You ask about skiing yet?

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[quax]

All of European terrorism has been home grown. And all terrorist activities e.g. IRA in the UK, RAF in Germany have been not eradicated militarily but rather by solid police work and much more important political initiative.

Rock solid politics is the foundation to overcome terrorism. Everything else is secondary. The US because of its outstanding position simply can not afford the kind of mistakes that have happened in the past.

But instead of pressing ahead with political initiatives to resolve one of the main causes for Arab hate against the US - the current administration solely relied on military might.

The post war efforts in Iraq have shown that too many political mistakes are still made. The US military performed flawlessly but the administrative planning has been lousy.

I monitor these Iraq blogs that I can highly recommend:

salam&raed
riverbend
healing Iraq

They are all happy that Saddam is gone, and want democracy in Iraq, but they also mercilessly shed light on all the mistakes that have been made, and that can have catastrophic consequences for these people. I very much feel for them.

If the US does not manage to convert Iraq into a democratic and free society the whole effort was for naught. That'll be utterly depressing.

The US can simply not afford to misunderstand the situation on the ground in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. Too much depends on it.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[FallLine]

All of European terrorism has been home grown. And all terrorist activities e.g. IRA in the UK, RAF in Germany have been not eradicated militarily but rather by solid police work and much more important political initiative.

Rock solid politics is the foundation to overcome terrorism. Everything else is secondary. The US because of its outstanding position simply can not afford the kind of mistakes that have happened in the past.

But instead of pressing ahead with political initiatives to resolve one of the main causes for Arab hate against the US - the current administration solely relied on military might.

The post war efforts in Iraq have shown that too many political mistakes are still made. The US military performed flawlessly but the administrative planning has been lousy.

I monitor these Iraq blogs that I can highly recommend:

salam&raed
riverbend
healing Iraq

They are all happy that Saddam is gone, and want democracy in Iraq, but they also mercilessly shed light on all the mistakes that have been made, and that can have catastrophic consequences for these people. I very much feel for them.

If the US does not manage to convert Iraq into a democratic and free society the whole effort was for naught. That'll be utterly depressing.

The US can simply not afford to misunderstand the situation on the ground in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. Too much depends on it.

So tell me. If Germany et. al have their acts so much in order, then why is Al Queda also targeting Germany?

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_499 10 9,00.html

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?ar ti cleid=437

Why did Libya blow up a nightclub in Berlin in 1986?

Why did the Libyan government blow up a French Airliners?

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,4789_W_108 32 06,00.html

Did it ever occur to you that the terrorists might want something untenable and fundamentally incompatible with democracy, such as the complete Islamisation of Saudi Arabia (as Osama would have it)? And you complain about US "support" of the Saudis now, pfft? Did it ever occur to you that you can't keep all people happy all the time, that there will always be some unhappy and violent individuals no matter what you do? Sept 11 2001 was the act of a handful of individuals, not hundreds, not thousands, not millions. Why do you presume good will alone will make these people go away?

As for the so-called Arab Street disliking the United States, how do you expect to reason with people, who clearly believe in outright lies about the Jews such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (which is openly sold throughout many parts of the arab world)? And what about those in the Arab world who still believe that 9-11 was just a Jewish or American conspiracy to attack Afghanistan? Real actions cannot compete with the make believe acts, particularly when the Arab world is full of leaders who find it all too convenient to point fingers at the United States and other superpowers so as the distract their people from their own problems.

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/archives/0000054 8. html

Most of the Arab world is poor and many have repressive governments that have no relation with the United States. They also believe firmly that they are a great people and that they, at one time, ruled the world. It would seem pretty logical to them that the West and, particular, the United States (being the richest and most visible) must be at fault. Now you add in hate and lies such as that in the "Protocols" and you have a potential terrorist on your hands. Out of a population of a couple million it only takes a very small percentage to eventually commit a major terrorist act.

As for Iraq, what exactly was lousy in the

Re:My cold dead hands!

[Anonymous Coward]

Send CV to EDS. Or Microsoft, for that matter.
And shut the fuck up!

friends.

[twitter]

m5shiv asks if The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" He's looking at it wrong. A friend of freedom is a friend of mine. Free software is my friend and openly published standards are good for everyone. Microsoft hates both of those things and is not your friend. While you might think that IBM is doing this to hurt Microsoft, it's far more likely that IBM is doing this to help IBM. I mean, how embarsing it must have been for IBM to have their desktops messed with by I LOVE YOU, Code Red, SirCAM, SoBig, Mellisa, Blaster and all that.

Go Big Blue! It's about time for you to take back the innovation crown those monkeys in Redmond pretended to wear.

Re:friends.

[MsGeek]

m5shiv asks if "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" He's looking at it wrong. A friend of freedom is a friend of mine.

When I was at SCALE 2x in November of last year, I got to talk to a few IBM-ers. They were all, to a person, gung-ho about the Linux switch.

It's a good thing. Nothing says "Fuck you, Darl" like a ThinkPad running Linux. We will probably see ThinkPads preloaded with Linux by the end of the year. [Daria]Go, go, kick butt.[/Daria]

Re:friends.

[drinkypoo]

Hurting Microsoft helps IBM. Or haven't you noticed that they have their own operating systems (OS/390, OS/400, AIX) and are also selling Linux solutions now? Not to mention, when people buy NT they might buy an IBM machine to run it on, but if they buy an IBM OS, they definitely buy IBM.

The reason we have to ask that question is that IBM was once one of the most restrictive-licensing corporations around. Back in the day, if you had an IBM mainframe, any software you developed on it belonged to IBM. No joke. Today, IBM is embracing the GPL and Linux. (Probably because they see the writing on the wall for AIX.)

Re:friends.

[TheAngryArmadillo]

I mean, how embarsing it must have been for IBM to have their desktops messed with by I LOVE YOU, Code Red, SirCAM, SoBig, Mellisa, Blaster and all that.

I work out at IBM in Austin. We did the math about our dealing with Windows updates and virii. If every employee of IBM spends just 30 minutes a year(I know, it's on the low side) dealing with Microsoft updates and problems IBM loses $3,000,000 in lost productivity. That's $3 million. We figured in a year the number was closer to 5 hours or $30,000,000 in lost productivity. That's a healthy chunk of change.

Re:friends.

[ShinmaWa]

Back in the day, if you had an IBM mainframe, any software you developed on it belonged to IBM. No joke.

No joke, because its BS. No company in their right mind would agree to turn over software they produced to IBM -- and the military and other government organizations, who still use IBM big iron to this very day, definately wouldn't.

IBM in support of Linux Desktop

[Mr Pippin]

This does not mean IBM wants to make their own linux

Even so, there are pleny of obstacles; so I recommend IBM take an active role in the development of the following:

XFree86

WINE

Sponsor a DESKTOP (either KDE or GNOME){I suspect GNOME is the frontrunner, though I favor KDE myself at this point}

Actively sponsor a native JAVA IDE for Linux{their VisualAge products to be specific}

Actively port your major desktop initiatives to Linux (mostly Notes {ugh})

Actively work on making ALL of the above a consistent and usable experience for users>/p>

My two cents

Re:IBM in support of Linux Desktop

[willdenniss]

Well there already doing the native Java IDE for Linux (and Windows) and doing quite well too.

http://eclipse.org/

Re:IBM in support of Linux Desktop

[iapetus]

Indeed: the existence of Eclipse for Linux has allowed me to migrate my work PC to Linux - there's now nothing that I needed to do under Windows that I can't do under Linux.

Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

And this is the one big problem with participants in the Open Source movement (note: not with Open Source, per se): There are many fine Open Source apps, but the majority of them are by developers for developers. We need to look more at what business needs out of Open Source. Hate PowerPoint? Well business wants it. Hate Access dB? Well, business loves it. And without any question, until OpenOffice addresses these issues full force, especially all the bells and whistle of Excel, "enterprise" businesses will not migrate the desktop. It really is going to be all about business applications if we want to win the desktop war.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[peragrin]

check out Star Office. I don't know the exact requirments that you need and if it will fill them all. Star Office(open office paid for cousin) comes with a database program, and Both include presentation. a PowerPoint style tool. Do they have all the features as MS stuff I don't know. ARe they working on it? more than likely

Re: Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Stryker2]

No, it's not. The "Open Source movement", such as it is, is about developing software that meets your need and making it available to others so that they may also benefit from it and possibly extend/improve it.

I see your claim repeated often, and it annoys me each time; it looks/sounds/feels like a religious crusade. If a business demands a given piece of software, they can fund its development. They can hire or divert their programmers to develop the project, or they can pay others to develop it. Seriously. Open Source software allows people/organizations to benefit from the charity of others; that does not mean that they have any "right" to demand any piece of software. They may ask, but they can also chip in and contribute themselves. And if they refuse to switch to Open Source software because an application that they want is not available, so what?

Businesses do not have to run Open Source software. If they are satisfied with their current solutions, more power to them.

That being said, you do have a point about the lack of polish in many Open Source applications. More attention to usability and missing features would probably entice more users to switch to it, but that is more of a concern for companies that want to make money from it than for developers that are donating their time to write the apps.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Both StarOffice and it's more Open Source brother, OpenOffice, and a great start. It's a fine package. But there are things they need to do to improve it. I see OpenOffice as 2 to 4 years behind MS Office for the thing biz wants. Don't get me wrong, it's a full-featured package, but still... There are things, places, areas that it needs to improve.

I did mention PowerPoint. I hate it (I *love* the Getysburg Address reduce to a PowerPoint). It dumbs down everything. But we can not get away from the fact that business wants it, it speaks to the PHBs like the Bible. There are other business apps as well. For example CRM apps.

But the one area that Open Source is very wanting is easy Application Install packages. You know, click-throughs and what not, fewer compatibility issues, and being able to handle compatibility issues in a more intuitive way. Not everyone is a Linux guru, and in Big Biz, time is defiantly money, and money makes the "enterprise" world go round and round. And, about a spell-checker that is as good as Google? MS Office spell checker sucks.

Re: Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Anonymous Coward]

"World domination. Fast."

That's the professed goal of Linus Torvalds, and I consider him a leading open source developer.

It's true that different people have different goals. RMS's original goal is "a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software". My impression is that RMS's goals are achieved when all the software is available to anyone who wants it.

And I agree that it's up to each contributor what goals to adopt. I believe in market share. I think my personal world is better when 30% of the world runs Linux desktops rather than 1%. Why? Because when 30% of people do something, political attacks are harder. If 1% of the population runs HURD, then Hurd will get killed by "Trusted Computing" BIOS'es. If 30% of the population runs Linux, then "Trusted Computing" BIOS's will have trouble in the market place.

So I agree with the parent poster that we gotta have more better Open Office. We gotta have a slide-making app that kicks ass at making PHB slides, the same way that gcc and emacs are first rate applications in their categories.

Re: Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up

Re: Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

No, it's not. The "Open Source movement", such as it is, is about developing software that meets your need and making it available to others so that they may also benefit from it and possibly extend/improve it.

Big biz is not going to buy into that. Do you want Linux on the desktop, or not?

Open Source software allows people/organizations to benefit from the charity of others; that does not mean that they have any "right" to demand any piece of software.

Than, I take it you really don't care if Linux makes it to the desktop of government or major businesses, you would not be unhappy if it stayed a server resource?

Businesses do not have to run Open Source software. If they are satisfied with their current solutions, more power to them.

You have just answered my questions! The parent story is about big business accepting Linux on the desktop. This is not an issue to you, I think. But for many, it is. I have outlined what, in my mind; it will take to put Linux on the desktop. If Linux does not address what big biz and the PHBs want, it will die (like *BSD? Sorry, that's a bad Slashdot joke), ending up a boutique OS like BeOS.

That being said, you do have a point about the lack of polish in many Open Source applications.

Thank you! Complement accepted (smile).

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[buysse]

In "Big Biz," it's bloody unlikely that someone is going to want to go to every workstation that needs an installation of MS Project -- it gets installed *once* by a tech, the box is imaged, and that image gets blown on 3000 other machines. Otherwise, you distribute the software (patches, etc) through GPOs in Active Directory (or Zenworks, for the proud few using NDS^H^H^HeDirectory) -- not running the original pretty graphical installer, in most cases (and assuredly not wanting the user to make decisions or have to click anything.)

Basically, UNIX systems are generally quite a bit easier to do such things on. I can configure cfengine to maintain a certain configuration, ensure that certain packages are up to date, etc. Or, alternately, I can use apt, yum, up2date/RHN, Red Carpet, Progeny's stuff, or whatever I want to update packages.

Yes, it does require that I have a person who can package the software I need for my desktops (RPM, dpkg, etc.) Windows applications and patches need to be repackaged for automated distribution too.

The key thing that I think you're missing is that in a business environment, you don't want Joe Secretary installing a new application on the box without IT involvement. There are people who are exceptions to this policy, and those people will remain the exceptions. I doubt you would ever pry the Macintosh away from a graphic artist, or local control from many developers -- and you don't need to. The vast majority of users don't need to bloody install a new solitaire game. Sorry. All they need for work is Word, Excel and Outlook -- or their OSS equivalents.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Apathetic1]

Ever tried to copy and paste a table from web browser into Excel? Try it some time. That's why I switched to OpenOffice...

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Feztaa]

I don't see this as a problem with open source at all.

Why should I have to develop a piece of software that I don't want to use, if I'm not being paid for it? Sure, if you want to pay me to develop some GPL software, I'll gladly make your PowerPoint viewer or Access DB client or whatever you want. But if I'm coding something on my time, I'll make something that's useful to me. And if it's useful to me, it might also be useful to other people like me (ie, developers).

If big companies like IBM want to join the fray and develop things that their customers want, then more power to them.

I don't really know how to phrase this, but all the John Q. Hacker's out there should *not* put down what they're doing and start developing boring apps for routine office work, unless it interests them to do so. IBM or whoever can pay people to do that, and so they will.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Brandybuck]

But we can not get away from the fact that business wants it [powerpoint].

Good news. OpenOffice Impress gives it to you. It does everyone PowerPoint does, and it does it today. When I have to create a presentation at work, I just use the company PowerPoint template, make my presentation, then send it off the people who need it, who then open it up in PowerPoint. All without using PowerPoint!

But the one area that Open Source is very wanting is easy Application Install packages.

Maybe it needs it, maybe it doesn't. But corporate IT departments do not have a need for it. The users aren't going to have the permission to install any software anyway. The IT guys will do this, and if they're worth their salary, they will have zero problems installing stuff.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[jbolden]

The original KDE project (KDE 1) was designed to prove that if you used a good widget set GUI programming could be fun. Back then it was seen as horrible tedious work that no one would do....

Writing boring office apps can be made fun.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[pantherace]

But the one area that Open Source is very wanting is easy Application Install packages. You know, click-throughs and what not, fewer compatibility issues, and being able to handle compatibility issues in a more intuitive way.

You need to really look at the strengths of Linux. The Linux package managers are light years ahead of windows. So some random rpm you download doesn't work, using some frontend. You aren't going to have users installing it in the corperate environment. Instead, you will have people issue one command and have it ssh (or other methods) and do an apt-get update, apt-get install new-corperate-package from your private mirror, and possibly apt-get upgrade to install any updates.

The package management is one of the greatest strenghs of Linux. Any GUI Installer thing better work with the native package manager, or it will be as broken as windows is in this area. If you doubt it, test this: install an update to a package (say openoffice) on 6 windows computers, now do the same for 6 linux computers. Up that to 10, 25, 100, 400 computers and you might understand. If you understand it, then the linux command can be one command (admittedly a complex one, but it could be a very simple shell script), but I know of no package managers on Windows that will allow easy installs of packages over a network. (Norton Ghost is $26-36 a seat, and starts to provide equivelent services.)

Re: Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linux does not address what big biz and the PHBs want, it will die (like *BSD? Sorry, that's a bad Slashdot joke), ending up a boutique OS like BeOS.

What will kill it? IOW, why should Linux become any less used than it is now (or than it was 2 years ago, or 5 years ago) simply because it doesn't seduce big biz and PHBs? If you have some emotional investment in displacing other OSes in a new arena (business desktops), then fine, but that has nothing to do with the continued, useful existence of Linux in the old ones.

Or, rather, it shouldn't... I quibble only because there is a possibility that the unbridled pursuit of desktop acceptance by big biz and PHBs may result in a less-useful Linux. You already see signs of that in things like UserLinux, where the desire to make Linux more suitable to business seems to be translating into cutting some very-commonly-used Linux projects out of the distro. Only time will tell if that approach is an abberation or a sign of things to come.

Speaking as an IBM employee (which is why I'm posting as an AC ;-) ), I'm somewhat apprehensive about a corporate policy of Linux desktops. It would be ironic (but not surprising, given the rule-making bureaucracy there) if the company's move towards LotD meant the death of my current Linux desktop. I have a feeling that if they mandate something, it is unlikely to be the vtwm window manager I am using there now ;-).

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Eminor]

We need to look more at what business needs out of Open Source.

Why? We should not be writing code tailored to business. They have the big bucks. We need a job and can be payed by them to tailor software (be it open souce or writing it from scratch or whatever) to meet their business needs.

Open source should not cater to the needs of any one group. It should meet the needs of those who write it. That's what it is all about: Writing code I'll use and sharing it.

That being said, however, authors should feel free to modify code based on user requests, but let's not design our code from the ground up to be used by someone other than ourselves.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[0x0d0a]

I did mention PowerPoint. I hate it (I *love* the Getysburg Address reduce to a PowerPoint). It dumbs down everything. But we can not get away from the fact that business wants it, it speaks to the PHBs like the Bible.

I've pretty much decided that the reason we have Powerpoint is becuause we have people that are deadwood at companies. They literally do nothing but reformat and polish Powerpoint presentations. It offers vast amounts of work to do, with no necessity of actually producing anything useful.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[mixmasta]

Let me introduce you to msi.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[16K Ram Pack]

But the one area that Open Source is very wanting is easy Application Install packages.

Generally, I'd agree with this, but OOo for Windows installs pretty easy.

As far as being 2 to 4 years behind, it is behind a little, but the thing is that Microsoft are now going to struggle to put new features in, because you just don't need anything else in a Word Processor. OOo could even go past MS Office in a couple of years.

I think more so than Linux, it's the biggest threat the Microsoft. They have great margins on it, and it locks people into Windows.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[PurpleWizard]

I would be slightly pedantic over what you say and question that they love them as opposed to know no different. Amounts to the same result but can be countered in a different manner.

I don't know which it is but amongst most people I know it is the knows no different. Once I have introduced people to OOffice they are quite happy. Especially when I point out that the unlicensed software they were running could be years in prison and/or significant fine if the authorities ever chose to take it seriously.

I always go for the carrot and stick explanation to them!

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[bninja_penguin]

Hate PowerPoint? Well business wants it. Hate Access dB? Well, business loves it.

Actually, business loves the end result of those products, not the products themselves. It's just that they don't know/haven't had any alternative. It is true I don't work on Large business systems, but I spend all day with local small business', and I guarantee you the way they use Word and Excel files, they could just as readily use Wordpad and Lotus 123 or whatever, from DOS days. For MY customer base, a better thing to port over would be QuickBooks, as they all use that.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Ben Hutchings]

Pasting from IE to Excel works correctly.

Pasting from Mozilla Firebird to Excel doesn't.

Pasting from Mozilla to OOCalc (on Linux) does.

Looks like it's a problem with Mozilla on Windows.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[pantherace]

Do you think everthing uses MSI to install to windows? Almost everything for linux comesin rpms or source (-> deb or slack, and gentoo can use any thing that can be scripted...)

Eating their own dog food

[ca1v1n]

IBM stands to make a killing migrating companies to linux. This is a great chance for them to experience the migration for themselves in a way that sending a few engineers to remote sites never can, and it's probably a lot cheaper for the amount of knowledge they'll get out of it. Obviously this is more than just an experiment, but it clearly makes good sense for them to say to the world "We did it, and we'll help you do it too."

Re:Eating their own dog food

[DarkAce911]

The knowledge gain will be huge, every tech they have in the company will know Linix. Big avantage over EDS and the other big consulting firms.

Re:Eating their own dog food

[Cpl Laque]

If they pull this off and actually take a chunk out of MS market share say 15-20% think of all the jobs that would create for slashdot geeks. While MCSE's are rushing to get certified for linux we would already be in the "know" BWAHAHHAHAHA!!! ph34r my 133t3 linux 5k1llz.

Obligatory quote...

[mishehu]

from SC2 - The Ur-Quan Masters:

"The enemy of your enemy is your friend, for a time."

Here's to hoping that time is a very long time!

No, IBM, Don't Do That!

[dupper]

SCO will sue you!

And the second employee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, I just have to say it:

"And the second one to find a way to sue IBM for this is employee for two months."

(Thank you! I'll be here all week!)

Enterprise Management?

[skooba]

what tools does linux have for enterprise management? don't get me wrong; i hate the windoze corp. as much as the next /.'er. but i have to admit that the their last 2 releases really simplify a corporate sysadmin's job. what does linux have to offer in this area?

for example, if ibm goes all-linux on their hundreds of thousands of desktops, how will they handle things like upgrades and patches, managing user accounts, security, etc.? will they use a non-free distro that has all these features, and if so, which distro(s) out there offer the kind of enterprise management features that ibm's windoze-addled admins have come to depend on?

i am sure that the sysadmins at ibm are asking themselves the same question. or perhaps they already know the answer...

Re:Enterprise Management?

[Robert The Coward]

Updates - Pick one Apt-get, Yum, up2date, there are many other. Once you pick one you setup a reposter inside you orignaztion and you push the update out. Work better then SUS.

User Accounts - Most Use LDAP / Kerbose(sp?) which is sorta what Active directory is althought with MS slant.

Use Can even use Tar / DD your images for easy roll out.

I admit I haven't admin more the 15 Windows Desktops for a small group of 200 Students but from what I have seen on my day job as a user in Corp. with thousand of Windows 2000 Desktops is that windows has a way to catch up to linux in user managment abilty.

Cisco is making the same move...

[Otto Eyebiter]

I work for a Cisco Gold partner. Word is, all Cisco products that run on Windows (CiscoWorks, CiscoSecure ACS, IP Telephony apps, etc...) will all be ported to Linux. A version of Call Manager has been running on Linux for over a year (it's just been kept secret).

Wish this was a Dell memo

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see memo like these coming out from Dell.
Linux is the future and there is no doubt about it.

Cool for a lot of companies already

[memmel2]

We currently use a lot of Dell computers. Dell has refused to support linux by providing open hardware specs for drivers. IBM has commited to supporting linux. So dude your not getting a Dell at my company. The IBM laptops are a lot better IMHO. This even means IBM for the Windows boxes since it's one support contract. Although we use a lot of Linux any company with a reasonable linux installed base is probably goining to swing ALL there boxes to a vendor that supports linux.

Undoing what they created

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like IBM is trying to undo the Microsoft monster they've created.

Re:The only thing worse that Slashdot trolls...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can name two worse things just off the top of my head:

Biggots and racists

The geeky no-good type of racist is esp. disgusting. Sorry of the OT post, but somebody has to say something.

IBM Corp., 350,000 user testbed

[schmim]

I've seen IBM do things like this before. I'm sure we all remember the fairly recent story of their plans to convert to VoIP.
When you're a company the size of IBM (approx 350k employees worldwide) .. Aside from a workforce, you have another very useful tool. A large testbed for refining both technology as well as sales/deployment strategy.
Working out the kinks in systems you want to sell (IBM's shift toward services) as well as being able to say, "Hey. We did it company-wide, and it works for us" in a sales pitch to companies small and large.
Its all about strategy. Definitely an intelligent way to testmarket things such as a Business Linux Desktop ... prove it works .. and sell the idea to the skeptics.
It used to be that "Nobody got fired for buying IBM"
While that isn't necessarily true anymore, it just shows that while IBM has shown itself to be a progressive company, they still carry the weight they did when they were that evil empire of old.

Great!

[Frequanaut]

Now maybe they can rehire the IBMers who were laid off recently in favor of offshore workers.

Advertisements

[bluepinstripe]

Then I wish IBM would stop running those ads that state, IBM recommends Windows XP for business (paraphrasing).

Re:My cold dead hands!

[1lus10n]

just a side thought ..... maybe the reason your apps are buggy is because the coders who wrote them sucked. or maybe its because the platform they were written on sucked.

not all upgrades are downgrades, thats an MS feature. of course if they have the same internal people working on the same internal apps your probably have the same problem.

Allegedly confirmed?

[teklob]

This memo allegedly confirms the move to Linux? So that means we're sure it may have happened, and it may have happened for sure. I don't think you can have 'confirms' in a topic ending with a question mark.

Re:I would move 100% to linux if

[bach37]

[if] I could play retail video games with no hassel

Get a Playstation 2 dude!

Scott

Re:All we need now is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

# cd /bin
# ln -s ls dir

As for TIME and DATE, I'll let you "man date" on your own.

About bloody time...

[donnz]

...around August last year Mary Ann Fisher IBM's "Linux Program Director for worldwide Public Sector" was busy telling government CIOs here in New Zealand that Linux was "not ready for the desktop".

Despite this statement IBM was busy negotiating a $50million deal with German taxpayer representatives to convert the city of Munich to Linux desktops.

Talk about hypocrisy, time to set the record straight, IBM.

Microsoft anti-customer behavior is psychological.

[Futurepower(R)]

That's an interesting question. Part of the shift in opinion may be due to the efforts of Lou Gerstner.

Why must big corporations be enemies of the public? There is no reason for it, except bad management.

The hostility toward Microsoft in entirely due to management failure, in my opinion. Microsoft's anti-customer, anti-community behavior is entirely due to the psychological shortcomings of Microsoft managers.

enemy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a moron or what? You know so little grasshopper.

Re:Quote of the year

[Seehund]

Mmmmmmmmmmm, a "Funny" post modded as "Troll", because whatever overzealous slashdotters are supposed to be overzealous about happened to be at the receiving end of the fun-poking stick!

Thanks, AC! It is a funny quote, and I'm willing to waste a meaningless karma point or two just to show that not all /. readers are retarded - not even all of us who support the Great OSS Cause. ;)

That will be day...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see the IBM sales team with Linux latop.

The built in wireless card does not work. Power management not enabled and disk is real sloooooowww under Linux.

Maybe we will finally see a Linux latop in what, 2006?

Re:That will be day...

[handmedowns]

I don't think thats the case..

I think you're just too inept to get these things working..

I've been seeing awesome linux laptop setups since 2001

Personally.. I run debian on an ibook.. wireless works awesome.. my suspend kicks ass and never had better disk access times with a standard desktop..

I just think you need to join a LUG so someone can teach you how to configure and use linux ;)

I think they've misspoken

[paroneayea]

don't they mean gnu/linux? :)

Solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Our chairman has challenged the IT organization, and indeed all of IBM, to move to a Linux based desktop before the end of 2005.

...and I know just the place to get one!

Hope this helps.

Even someone running Word can use RTF

[rs79]

Tell my boss that.

2000: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2001: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2002: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2003: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

Guess how 2004 is shaping up? Hint: he sent me a doc file this morning.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to look for a new job? :)

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[MsGeek]

Four words. Open Office dot org. Unless there's really fancy crap in that .DOC file (which Open Office usually ignores gleefully) it will open the .DOC easily.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Sounds like my experience. I've said in the past, there are only two types of bosses in the world, those that won't learn from their mistakes and those that don't learn from anything but mistakes.

I think you need some procmail rules to prevent your boss's stupidity from costing you time.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[rifter]

Tell my boss that.

2000: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2001: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2002: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2003: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

Guess how 2004 is shaping up? Hint: he sent me a doc file this morning.

You think that is bad? We have project managers who are in love with MSProject, and send everything in that format. Nevermind the fact no one has that on their windows desktop. I finally requisitioned that and found that everything she had been sending me could have been done in notepad and better so.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[Anonymous Coward]

2005: Your boss realizes that he, not you, is the boss, and, in response to your whining, shitcans you. :-)

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[Avada Kedavra]

rs97: "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

Boss: "Your stubborn ass is fired.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[cerberusss]

Unless there's really fancy crap in that .DOC file (which Open Office usually ignores gleefully) it will open the .DOC easily.

This topic has gotten on so many times, it's getting silly. YES, OOo wil open it but have you tried to write it back? And have it exactly the same as it was? No. You didn't.

So when I'm analyzing a design and cooperating with a client's analists, and the Word documents make a round-trip (i.e. I edit, she edits, I edit some more, she edits some more) then the Word document gets screwed up halfway, due to bugs in the im/export.

And that's only logical; after all, no im/export filter is completely faultless. But don't say that OOo solves the lock-in by MS Office, because it doesn't.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[Knightmare]

Thats the neat part about him being the boss, he doesn't have to put up with your sh#@, you have to put up with his.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it, you want to do thing's your way and not the way the boss wants you to. I'm only amazed he kept you around for 4 years.

Just as amazed that IBM would try to dictate an internal standard that is at current varience with the way the rest of the world works (MS Office file formats). It is one thing for a organization that is relatively isolated to have an unusual standard because they are largely internal in focus, but for a marketing organization to start sending out things that only confuse potential customers, I wonder if this is really going to work or if the pushback will kill this initiative.

I work in a consultants environment, working with dozens of companies every day. When we are jointly working on a proposal, there is no discussion on the file formats that are going to be used to exchange pieces of data. It is presumed. And you'd better be able to use the plug-ins and add-ons that make these things de-facto standards. Even when writing proposals involving Linux or Linux-compatibility.....

Now we just delivered 12,000 files worth of documentation in cross-linked HTML format rather than in doc format so don't get the idea I'm saying every peg has to be the same shape.

But in a marketing world, you sure as heck better be .doc compatible or people aren't gonna want to work with you.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[swv3752]

Stop the cycle. Save RTF. It will still open by default in MSWord and likely they will never notice. Now it now longer breaks by being imported by OOo or just different version of Word.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[DrCode]

I'd be a little more careful, or you could have this:

2004: Laid off. Job outsourced. You send your resume as ASCII or PDF to a company or recruiter, and you get an email back saying they can't read it, "Please submit a .doc version."

It's sad, but true.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[cerberusss]

Stop the cycle. Save RTF.

I bet you are still in college. Do you think my manager will be happy when I receive a .DOC and save it in RTF? Do you think the customer understands this?

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[swv3752]

Half the time, they will not see the extension. It presumably will have the same name. Maybe you are not aware that the MIME type association for RTF is MS Word, if MS Word is installed, otherwise it is Wordpad. They go to open the document and it will open just fine in Word.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[cerberusss]

I decided to give it a shot. So I saved some Word documents of the current project in RTF. Closed MS Word, then opened them again. Flawless. Everything was in pristine order.

Now OOo, which was the point of discussion. Last time I checked OOo, it was at 1.1beta, so I downloaded and installed the new 1.1. Started Ooo Writer, opened the RTF version of the project memo: completely FUBAR. Margins, enumerations, TOC and lots more screwed up. Then I opened the original DOC in OOo; slightly better. Have the bugs been solved that I logged a year ago? Nope. Problems with the symbol font, table cells, enumerations? Yes.

Now you see why I still use MS Office (using Crossover Office)? It's because the rest is not compatible! IMHO, OOo should concentrate on getting the filters flawless. I've done my part with logging bugs but if nothing is done about them, I stop that, too.

I wouldn't bet on that

[bluGill]

IBM is big. Care to compare the cost of developing your own word processer vs buying everyone Office?

Don't forget that IBM bought Lotus a few years back, and in the bargin god an office suite. That gives them something to start from if they choose to go that route. (though many would agrue that starting from scratch would be better)

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[shaitand]

I seriously doubt they would have to do all that nonsense. Openoffice is already 99% of the way there. If they fill in the Access hole they are done.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[autiger]

SmartSuite has been in 'support' mode for quite some time; not a lot of development talent/experience left in that group. Porting the big Win32 apps realy wouldn't be cost-effective.

However, several years ago, they produced a set of Java based productivity applets (ahead of their time) that the source for is sure to be laying around somewhere.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[vegetasaiyajin]

Openoffice is already 99% of the way there. If they fill in the Access hole they are done.
I constantly see people complain about the lack of an Access equivalent in OpenOffice.
IIRC Access is just a very low-quality pseudo RDBMS. Why would anyone want to use that crap when much better RDBMS are available for free?
I'm serious about it. I have never in my life had any use for such a thing as Access. Has Access changed to something different in the last years. What do people who use Acceess do with it? What is it useful for?

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[benjamindees]

Not a damn thing. You're right, Access is only useful for people who can't set up a real database or don't know that they exist. OOo + MySQL is just as good if not better.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[Anonymous Coward]

Access is not at all widely used in IBM. IBM's Office license doesn't include Access for the average user, so Access only gets bought and used by departments that absolutely need it and can justify the cost.

Lotus Notes, on the other hand, is very widely used, and has no native client for Linux.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[roca]

Then perhaps they're done. It's not widely known but Openoffice has an Access-like database front end.

http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/OOoMySQL.pdf

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[naelurec]

The thing that is nice about access is the fact that everything is integrated in one app. You can setup your tables, queries, forms and reports. .. generally fairly quickly and easily if you have some basic knowledge of Access.

Granted, the draw back is the default backend -- people start small databases in Access and attempting to go multiuser and running into performance issues, security issues, etc.

For basic stuff like contact management, sales estimates, etc, Access provides a quick and relatively painless way to get up and going fast.

I think this is what people want. If OpenOffice.org would ship with a product similar to Rekall and include a basic database engine + capabilities to tap into corporate databases, that would be a great way to round out the entire OOo suite.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[shaitand]

In terms of technical functionality, Access sucks arse. It is without a doubt a piece of junk in terms of a Database. It loses data often and to achieve locking access clients broadcast everything they do on the network for other access clients to pick up, so the more clients, the more junk traffic that grows exponentially.

Access however is EXTREMELY easy to use and get a database up and running. 90% of the access databases out there could be built by a secretary with nothing more than the help files included with access to guide her. That is the benefit, as a result paper MCSE's everywhere have people running access databases and they are so deeply rooted and critical and so much data is locked into them that they can't be readily replaced.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[shaitand]

What would be better would be if OO talked to existing access databases as well.

Those who need access already have access databases and it's not exactly like there is an easy and complete way to export the data out and import it into something like Rekall

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[Ben Hutchings]

Yes, but UnixODBC sucks ass. Look at the code and run screaming. Look for documentation and give up!

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[bigman2003]

You have to think outside of your box, Jack.

Access is great for a lot of people. The ability to set up the entire DB, including forms, reports, data, etc. and e-mail that one file to someone else in the company is great.

Access also inter-operates with Word very well- so that list of customers (or whatever) that they just e-mailed you from the office across the country, can be mail-merged with your letter from Word. It is a format that can be understood by the basic user- just a single file. It's much easier than when they say "what do you mean I need to connect to the database server...can't you just e-mail it to me?"

Also, Access can be 'upsized' into SQL Server very easily.

No- Access is not great, but it does have its uses. Just like a race car driver who has to accept that a lot of the rest of the world drives automatics. We need to understand that not everyone really needs a RDMS server.

Has anyone here seen PL/I? Or used JCL?

[dpilot]

Yes, barely. Yes, a fair amount.

I really didn't mind JCL. Once you got used to it, it gave you very good control and ability to nail things down. It gave much more of a 'ready, aim, shoot' mentality to batch jobs, and by comparison sometimes shell scripts seem more like 'ready, shoot, aim.'

Actually, the Linux types inside IBM (not the suits at the top making this noise) are very well in tune with the Linux community, and how things work. For a prime example, take a look at the turn EVMS took in the past year.

History Repeats

[appleLaserWriter]

Yes, but realize that IBM has been around since about 1914, that they have been the "bad guy" before, and just because they are supporting open source now doesn't mean that they couldn't find a way to exploit it for their own selfish good later.

Is that kind of like the Russian empire? Populist opinion pushed communism, but then the leaders ran around killing everyone in sight. Later they open up the west, only to have their currency devalued and rampant crime take over.

here's my challenge to IBM

[way2trivial]

how about selling desktops with linux?

I just went through the 'let me build it' option for every class of desktop..

how about an option for LINUX installed..
every class had only windows versions as an option..

I don't think you understand Linux desktop

[putaro]

The phrase "Linux desktop" makes a lot of sense when you use it referring to running Linux ON people's desktop (the top of their desk) as opposed to in the server room.

Browser wars

[pluto378]

If true, such a move by IBM has the potential to reignite the browser wars. I'm so annoyed by companies that use IE API and customize their websites to work only with IE. A good example is comcast, which forces customers to register for their broadband service using only IE 6 or above.

Awesome, but what about Notes?

[Halo-]

The biggest hurdle is gonna be migrating Lotus Notes. Pretty much the entire world runs off Notes within IBM. (Except the stuff on VM, which is being phased out...) R5 runs fairly well (but far from flawlessly) under Wine, but R6 doesn't work at all.

I work at IBM, and Linux is the only OS I use. It's a little rough in some spots, but ultimately workable. For me, the combo is:

SameTime (The Lotus Messenger) => Sanity (a Perl based clone)
Notes R5 => Notes R5 under CrossOver Office
MS Office => MS Office under CrossOver Office (when needed)

If Linux were the official desktop, that would be awesome.

Note: While I work at IBM, I'm not in any of the areas which decide these issues, and have no information is support or refutation of the rumors in the report. (But I can dream...)

Re:Awesome, but what about Notes?

[The_DoubleU]

The Notes 6.5.1 Beta runs under wine. And Notes will be webbases in the future. With the help of java applets, you will be able to use Notes via your browser. There will not be a native Linux client for notes. But the Lotus chief is a big OSS fan and wants all lotus products to work with linux.

Re:Awesome, but what about Notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Got another one for you. How about CRM? IBM adopted Siebel (currently 7.0.5) and activeX for all of its customer facing people (call centers, sales reps, tech support) and is busy rolling it out. Unfortunately they have no way right now of supporting a non-Windows desktop - unless they want to deploy a rather large Citrix installation just to support their CRM solution?

Re:Awesome, but what about Notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an interesting article on notes.net about the direction that IBM are taking with Notes / Lotus Workplace.

It looks like they are planning to move the notes client into something based on the Eclipse platform in the same way that Websphere Studio is. This would mean that notes would have a fully supported linux client just in time to migrate everyone to a liunx desktop.

Re:Awesome, but what about Notes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better, Sanity has a port for FreeBSD. :)

Re:Awesome, but what about Notes?

[Halo-]

I am soooo gonna try that later today! Thanks :)

This simply cannot be overstated

[rs79]

Anybody remember the mid 1980s?

The Mac was gonna set the world on fire. It did desktop publishing to beat all hell. But not Lotus 1-2-3 so one got put in the graphics department and everybody else got PCs. And Lotus.

The Amiga was one of the neatest computers ever made, it outperformed the PC in every respect... but it never ran Lotus 1-2-3. Two businesses bought them and they were gone within 5 years.

Whatever software your idiot boss needs to run dictates the platform the company and businesses in general, will use. There are simply no exceptions to this rule.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[jefftp]

Linux can run "SC" the only spreadsheet a real man needs. ;)

To be serious, I actually used SC on FreeBSD for all my budget, payroll, and productivity trending at an ISP I worked at. A curses based spreadsheet works fine over a 9600 bps modem.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Evil Pete]

Exactly true. I used to have to run some Lotus classes at the time, apart from the PC support, programming etc etc. And when the ordinary guys learnt about 123 their first reaction was to go out and buy a PC. Then try and dig up some shitty excuse to the wife/husband/SO to validate it. 1-2-3 really sold the PC. I could do complicated stuff on lotus literally with my eyes shut back then ... the horror, but I recovered.

I think similarly OpenOffice will sell open source and Linux (indirectly) once it gets a bit of critical mass. Perhaps IBM will supply that critical mass ... especially if they decide that they prefer their documents as SXW format (not likely, but if you're IBM you can make these things happen).

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[jbolden]

Mac had an even better version of Lotus 1-2-3 called "Lotus Jazz". It wasn't the lack of a spreadsheet that was a problem rather the issue was relative value.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Tony-A]

Whatever software your idiot boss needs to run dictates the platform the company and businesses in general, will use. There are simply no exceptions to this rule.

Methinks that is why IBM moving to a Linux based desktop is significant. IBM as a Linux customer has enough intelligence and clout to discover and ensure the existence of whatever business needs in a "Linux based desktop".

To understand the significance of Lotus 1-2-3, take a medium poor and messy and large spreadsheet and try to accomplish the same thing in your language of choice. Now try to keep up with your idiot boss as (s)he mutates and messes up said spreadsheet.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody remember the mid 1980s?

I'd thank you not to remind me.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

Starcraft? ;-)

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Frizzle Fry]

Whatever software your idiot boss needs to run dictates the platform the company and businesses in general, will use.

I don't think that wanting to use a platform that runs the software you need makes you an idiot. In fact, quite the opposite: using a platform that doesn't run the software you need because it's the new hot thing makes you an idiot.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Alain Williams]

1. I actually
2. used SC on FreeBSD

Why the past tense ? I still do use SC for many things.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm...I think it's because he and you are different people.

Yet, when you buy a Thinkpad

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'supported' OSes are listed as Windows versions.

Not a GNU/Linux fork or a 4.4BSD-Lite derived OS to be seen.

IBM has the best business idea in the world

[bagsc]

1) Spend n billion dollars making Linux better than MS
2) Tell everyone its free and it supports everything they need. Provide them free OS CD's and downloading bandwidth.
3) Only they need IBM to migrate businesses. For a nominal fee, of course. After all, they practically created Linux, right?
4) Then savor the shocked look on Bill's face.

Oh, yeah
5) ???
6) PROFIT!!

Dark Lord

[Dark Bard]

The forces are gathering against the Dark Lord Gates. "One operating system to rule them all. One operating system to find them, one operating system to bring them all and in the darkness bind them"

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux - not really

[Bunyip Redgum]

Notes 6.5 clients only run on windows or OSX.

[see http://www.lotus.com/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/6 5sysrequirements ]

Domino Servers however run on linux (and windows, solaris...)

IBM have put a lot of work into allowing a browser to access most of Notes functionality when the Domino server and applications are appropriately configured.

Apple will like it...

[Kjella]

How good, or bad, is this for Apple?

Wouldn't they rather be picking up all the disenfranchised Windows users?

I don't think the OS X and Linux userbase have *that* much in common, except that they're both non-Windows. Apple has been fighting Mircosofts dominance for many years, and never gotten anywhere. On their own, it's unlikely that they ever would.

Now, if the Windows monopoly is breaking, many more will take a look around. Not feel so "locked in" to Windows anymore. And with OS X, Apple is in a position to pick up quite a few of those users. So given Apple's alternatives, I think they're happy Linux is chewing away at Windows. And with Microsofts attention drawn to Linux, they get even more room to play in.

Kjella

No Notes client for Linux?

[krygny]

Domino will run on Linux, but I don't think Lotus makes a Notes client. I've recently wondered why. Maybe IBM would just assume dump it than port it to Linux. Fine with me. The most horrible software ever made.

Re:No Notes client for Linux?

[marcushnk]

IBM has been moving away from a client server enviroment for the wondrous Domino world for ages now.. 6.5 is almost the last step before tossing the client out the window..

Its interesting to note that the have gone out of their way to support Mozilla with iNotes etc etc... fear not.. the world of Notes and linux will be a brilliant partnership! :-)

Re:No Notes client for Linux?

[autiger]

Domino will run on Linux, but I don't think Lotus makes a Notes client. I've recently wondered why. Maybe IBM would just assume dump it than port it to Linux. Fine with me. The most horrible software ever made.

It's the cost stupid. Consider there may be upwards of 40M lines of code in the Notes client. And it's not just the pure development cost of the port either; it's testing and support, etc. See Ed Brill's blog.

Re:No Notes client for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the blog entry:

We have also announced that in Domino 6.5, iNotes Web Access will support the Linux version of Netscape's 7.0 browser.

Netscape 7? Why not Mozilla? It doesn't seem like supporting Mozilla would cost that much more, and we wouldn't have to use Netscape! I guess it's a start...

Re:No Notes client for Linux?

[autiger]

He meant Mozilla. The actual release notes shipped with Domino 6.5 specifiy Mozilla 1.3.1 (for Linux clients only) running on Red Hat 7.2, 8.0, 9; SuSE 8.0 (united Linux 1.0) and SuSE 8.0.

IBM worried?

[countach]

Sounds like IBM are really worried that they will lose the SCO lawsuit.

N O T !!!!!

Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[OrangeTide]

I don't understand the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" bit. So what, Apple made a big anti-IBM commecial back in 1984. Both Apple and NeXT embraced IBM by the late 80s and through-out the 90s.

IBM created the PC and then basically "open sourced" the architecture. Who knows why they did this, because lots of people made big money off it, and IBM didn't see very much of that. So IBM made PS/2 and MCA(microchannel) and tried to wrestle the market back. Then they gave up and focused on providing business machines (servers). They kept starting and discontining their home computer lines. I can never remeber if they still make desktops, harddrives or laptops. :)

I'm not sure why IBM would be the enemy. They are pretty active in the open source community. They don't really "interfere" with our choices of systems.

Also I'm actually surprised to see this in the news. I foolishly assumed IBM already moved to using Linux a few years back. They seem to promote Linux enough at tradeshows and TV and magazine ads. I guess it's hard to promote Linux if you aren't willing to use it in your own company, perhaps this is just putting their money where their mouth is.

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[phillymjs]

IBM created the PC and then basically "open sourced" the architecture. Who knows why they did this, because lots of people made big money off it, and IBM didn't see very much of that.

According to most of the books I've read concerning the history of the computer industry, it happened something like this:

The IBM PC was hurriedly slapped together with off-the-shelf parts because IBM wanted a piece of the burgeoning personal computer market, which was then practically owned by Apple. IBM knew that if they went through their normal development cycle and did everything in-house, the product would have been hopelessly late to market. So they assembled a team of people and told them to basically circumvent the normal IBM Way of Doing Things, and did so by buying almost every component they needed from outside vendors, including the OS, which came from a relatively small company called Microsoft (perhaps you've heard of them?). The only truly proprietary part of the PC was the BIOS.

Anyway, IBM went ahead with the PC because they thought that the proprietary BIOS would prevent anyone from duplicating the PC without getting trampled by IBM's lawyers. They also thought that the volume discount component prices they were getting could not be matched by any ragtag startup company. Compaq proved them wrong, first by reverse-engineering the BIOS and then producing an IBM PC clone profitably.

Phoenix also reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS, but instead of building their own PC clones with it, they began licensing their version to anyone who wanted to use it.

Then the hardware producers in Asia started stamping out shipping containers full of parts, component prices reached 'commodity' status, and IBM's perceived exclusive economies of scale were history.

Microsoft's non-exclusive terms with IBM let them license MS-DOS to anyone who wanted it, so the cloners were able to ship the same OS as IBM.

IBM still tried to compete, but their product cycle was twice as long as everyone else's. IIRC, Compaq was first to market with a 386-based system. IBM had defined the standards and then the cloners ran away with the market. Microchannel was IBM's attempt to regain the title of 'standard-bearer' for the computer industry, but the cloners took one look at the onerous licensing terms for MCA and said no thanks. They then formed their own coalition to develop standards for the hardware they were developing, and that was pretty much it for IBM as a force in the personal computing market.

So basically, IBM didn't "open source" their hardware purposely. They were victims of their own greed-- desperate to get a piece of the personal computer market as quickly as possible, they created an almost completely open system that was much more quickly and easily duplicated by third parties than they thought.

~Philly

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" bit. So what, Apple made a big anti-IBM commecial back in 1984. Both Apple and NeXT embraced IBM by the late 80s and through-out the 90s.

I know I'm not suppose to feed the trolls, but here goes...

enemy of linux == microsoft

enemy of microsoft == ibm

my == linux

enemy of my enemy is my friend

Therefore, ibm == my friend

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[swillden]

So what, Apple made a big anti-IBM commecial back in 1984. Both Apple and NeXT embraced IBM by the late 80s and through-out the 90s.

You're not looking back far enough to understand the anti-IBM sentiment; by the mid 80s, IBM had been complying with the consent decree for five years, and had lost much of the IT stranglehold that had given it such a bad name. You need to look back to the early 70's, when PC's were hobbyist toys built from mail-order kits and IBM held the IT industry in an iron grip.

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[OrangeTide]

IBM's systems are still popular enough to fund their research. They also make a nice profit on their IC fabrication arm (you can use the fab for relatively cheap, but you have to license IBM's tools and cores). IBM's storage division isn't doing too shabby either. (they charge a lot, for little service or hardware. that's the ideal business model, if you can only get the customers).

People still buy and use those mainframes, I think IBM still has it made for IT in the airline, government and banking sectors. (perhaps a few others I'm not aware of).

But you are absolutely right. IBM really has lost it's grip on IT. I don't see them as my enemy because they really aren't that strong (or perhaps they aren't focusing their energies?)

I actually worked for a company started by a bunch of ex-IBM people. It was a miserable experience. Imagine all the drawbacks of a start-up (long hours, lack of resources for projects, etc), but with none of the advantages because it is ran like a megacorp. (layers of managers, brutal politics, "memos", half dozen meetings or more, etc). I'm just a lowly software engineer. Why do I need to spend 12-16 hours a week in meetings? I don't know if IBM itself is like that, perhaps it's changed. I just know that startups ran like old school IBM is not a good deal for the employee.

I think it's amazing IBM survived despite a laundry list of major mistakes. If IBM were a more flexible and energetic company at the time they would be in a much better position now. IBM could have been the evil empire. They could have owned the hardware AND software. Wouldn't that be a dark day!

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[Zakabog]

The enemy (IBM) of my enemy (Microsoft) is my friend (IBM is Microsoft's enemy, therefore, IBM is my friend.)

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[steveha]

I mostly agree with your comments. A few notes:

0) I don't think IBM expected the PC to be the monster hit it turned out to be. If they had realized ahead of time how huge it would be, they would have done things differently.

1) Remember how awful the keyboard was? Great IBM clackity-clack keys, but important keys were in weird places, and I was always typing '/' when I wanted to hit the Shift. One theory says that IBM was worried that the PC would eat into sales of IBM word processors (i.e., machines sold by IBM that did only one thing, word processing). Of course the PC totally wiped out the market for dedicated word processors, and of course third-party keyboards were instantly available.

2) There is a lot of evidence that IBM wasn't just taking a long time in product development, but actually was trying to slow the pace of PC development. The IBM PC AT, when it shipped, had a 286 with a socketed 6 MHz clock chip. The circuits were all fast enough for an 8 MHz clock. It appears that IBM made a last-minute decision to ship with 6 MHz instead of 8. Then, as you noted, Compaq actually beat IBM to market with the first 386. I think IBM was having internal wars, because the 386 was where the PC was starting to really be a threat to IBM's minis. (The 386 is the first chip that could run *NIX properly!)

It does appear that IBM has learned their lessons. They aren't trying to hold back the industry anymore.

Some people may wonder whether we can ever truly trust a large corporation. With free software, we can welcome their contributions without needing to trust them. And as the old saying goes: "When you don't have to trust someone, you know you can trust them."

steveha

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[iapetus]

That assumes that forall:A,B enemy(A,X) && enemy(B,X) => friend(A,B) - which can be shown to be untrue with a simple game of Quake.

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[swillden]

IBM really has lost it's grip on IT. I don't see them as my enemy because they really aren't that strong (or perhaps they aren't focusing their energies?)

I disagree. IBM is very strong, but has learned to build a business that doesn't require an iron grip in order to be successful.

IBM could have been the evil empire. They could have owned the hardware AND software. Wouldn't that be a dark day!

IBM *was* the evil empire, and *did* own the hardware AND software. They got overconfident and relied more on lock-in and control than on innovation and service and so lost their monopoly. The anti-trust action against IBM also helped break their control. Sounds a lot like the new evil empire, doesn't it? One key difference being that the anti-trust action was effective against IBM because IBM obeyed the terms of its consent decree.

A couple of notes on the subject....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several posts in here talking about IBM being able to skip out on upgrade costs fro Longhorn in 2006 or whenever. To that point I think you need to realize how huge corporations (I have worked for a few) deal with Microsoft. They don't buy individual licenses for anything. These companies just pay a huge sum of money to get a site license which, depending on the contract, can cover all MS software. Now with what IBM looks to be doing, they could most likely stop renewing that site license, which I imagine is quite a sizable chunk of money.

On the subject of what is run internally... remember that there is a lot of engineering work that goes on at IBM and there are a lot of people working on servers. This means there are a significant number of people running AIX on their "desktop" (I actually had a small server.) So the transition to GNU/Linux is not much of a stretch for a lot of users and is probably most welcome due to all of the nice tools GNU/Linux has to offer. This of course is from my point of view working in an engineering area. This whole upgrade will be a much bigger challenge for the business side of the company.

Anyway, glad to see this happening. I hope it works out well for them.

Perspective...

[OneFix]

From a former (4 year) IBMer...keep in mind this was recent...think summer...moved on...IBMs stability sucks right now...

What ppl have to understand is that IBM is HUGE...I mean, there are companies and products created for the sole purpose of supporting IBMs infrastructure...and I'm talking about applications that you would know...like Lotus SmartSuite...some applications just don't make enough money to continue without support from within...

IBM installs tons of employee systems daily...you can bet they will get it right...of course I can bet that the reason they are doing this is that their massive site licenses for NT4 are kind of old now...(most IBM workstations are STILL NT4...has to do with the number of seats they are licensed for)...

I wouldn't be surprised if they announced some sort of a deal with RedHat or SUSE (IBM's 2 biggest tested distros) some time in the next year...

Re: your .sig...

[MsGeek]

Get a Knoppix disk and boot your ThinkPad with it. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. It won't touch your install of XP. My 600e is currently running a HD install of Knoppix. I liked how it worked so much running from CD I did the knx-hdinstall. Only sound didn't come up from first boot.

I wonder

[The Analog Kid]

What Microsoft is thinking about this, IBM is one of the largest players in the computing field and something like this is sure to catch Linux/IBM's competitor. Doing something like this shows that IBM stands behind the product they support 100%(Remember that commercial with Avery Brooks). IBM will probably be doing some tweaking to the desktop and will probably send the changes back to the respected projects, and that will be good for everyone.

Crossover Office?

[Goonie]

Apparently, Crossover Office runs Visio just fine. I'd bet that IBM could negotiate a pretty good volume deal from CodeWeavers as well...

Whilst the Visio clones take their time to develop, this should be a reasonable alternative.

Re:I would move 100% to linux if

[buddydawgofdavis]

bach37, you speak words of wisdom. I use Linux at home. I pondered with the game dilemma (i got kids), bought them a new nintendo game cube for less than $80 US. That is cheaper than most video cards. The darn thing can support up to 4 players. Can't imagine why games would influence anyone when it comes to choosing an OS, unless your a kid I guess.

Re:The crab people will soon take over!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm referring to the lame notion that the dorks over at Anti-Slash may actually be chipping away at the enemy. Slashdot is a cesspool of limpdicked self-rightous lameness as we all know. My problem is, as much as I'd love to see Slashdot go down in flames, and as much as the fat pasty I'm-Better-Than-Slashdot geek faggots seem to want the same, I can't seem to bring myself down to their level of karmawhoredom at the moment. Karmawhoring is an "artform" that just seems to reek of sucking AIDS-ridden cock. Yet both myself and these losers have the same noble goal. I certainly have the skills and the resources to wreak havoc, but at what cost? I'm at a crossroad to help them or crapflood their site (something which they say they will fix... kinda sounds like Slashdot's "lameness" filter). In the fight against evil, is it worth it to team with a dark side to fight another dark side? This is my quandry. I must meditate on this.

IBMers, please do your homework ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the names and the offices listed in the document - the Open Desktop group it mentions doesn't exist organizationally, and the names listed aren't managers!

This is so obviously a hoax! But a good one and probably with some insider knowledge. That is not to say that IBM isn't going to push towards linux, but I doubt that Windows will be pushed out completely before the rest of the business world uses it.

Re:IBMers, please do your homework ;)

[Tennyson]

That's not entirely correct. One of the people mentioned is listed as "Program Manager - Workplace Framework" Another is shown as part of the "Open Client Project Office" and the author is "CIO, and VP on demand technology enablement". I HAVE done my homework, both on the content of the note and the people mentioned and I am surethis si not a hoax. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I heard about this initiative at least a month ago from somebody in the Linux Solution Speciality.

Re:IBMers, please do your homework ;)

[kylegordon]

That's not what my mate in the storage division says...

We all forgot

[bigjnsa500]

We all forgot the Linux based commercials IBM has been running for many months now. Note the basketball commercials with Linux on the jersey or a Penguin as a mascot.

And my favorite Linux Commercial. "What's his name?.... Linux"

Re:We all forgot

[cute-boy]

Well I clicked on all 3 links, with my KDE linux box with Real player and mplayer plug-ins installed, which most of the time sort-of works with a bit of effort for video news clips etc., and for one reason or another none of the links found a specific plug-in that would do.

Where peronally, as I said, I use 2 things: real player, which is ugly but works most of the time, and mplayer, which does some very weird shit with Microsoft streaming stuff. Media stuff just has to work in the linux desktop, just so you don't feel like you are running though quicksand to view what every hot XXX website turns your on:

Jerking off in from of a linux box is to be more effort than reward.

:P

IBM should make their own site more linux friendly by using standard mime types to server up content, or at least use standard embedding stuff, rather than using what I assume is a javsascript check for a very particular plug in.

Overall though, I was shopping for a new PC today, and IBMs PC offereing seemed better value and less confusing.

But, Dell, Do we really need a billion versions of what is now, for most poeple, a simple desktop comodity - these days I simple don't have the care to do all that configuration shit - buying a PC is not exciting, it's tedious.

RG :P

IBM has supported linux world for a long time

[pether]

If you take a look at IBM website you see that have produced a lot of helpful documentation for people to learn how to switch to Linux for a long time.

So nothing new really, think this is strategic decision they made a few years ago but they had to wait for all the software to mature.

Stop whining. Start Wining.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't begin to tell you how primitive they are...

Whine, whine, whine, whine.
Oops. I mean Wine, Wine, Wine, Wine.

They open sourced by accident

[brian0x00FF]

They made a strategic mistake with the open architecture of the IBM PC XT and AT coumbined with Microsoft controlling the OS. All it took was Compaq to reverse engineer the BIOS and everybody was off to the races. When legal action did not put the genie back in the bottle, they tried really hard to correct their mistakes and take back control of the machine with their proprietary MicroChannel arctitecture. Fortunately, people saw through that, and those 386-based machines were relegated to the confines of technically innept corporations and backward universities such as Ohio State, whose CompSci and IT staffs wouldn't know any better if you beat them all day with clue sticks.

Re:I would move 100% to linux if

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a dictionary, dude!

Re:I would move 100% to linux if

[Anonymous Coward]

You need some serious help.

Maybe for the end user . . .

[Idou]

But I quietly wait for the day when stupid managers are replaced by smatter managers who realize that Excel, Access, and its ilk only create drones that copy and paste all day, tend to their macros that greatly complicate "simple" programming problems(therefore, must be tended to), and create "irreplaceable employees" that you can't fire because what they do is so poorly documented the business would stop running for an unexceptable time if you did (hmm, what does this cell do . . .).

I can't wait . . . until outsourcing to India and China makes programming so cheap that all those drones who think they are "knowledge workers" can finally be set free to get real careers because companies can now afford masters of Perl and the DBI module to actually bring back efficiency and dignitiy to the human race by expressing human thought in a burst of insightful code ONCE, instead of mindless clicks and grunts every month, an endless cycle of futility.

Mind you, these new knowledge workers will most likely be home grown, once unemployed programmers who went back to school to learn accounting and finance. They will believe in solving the same problem ONCE and will not be afraid to code to get the job done. They will also have seen how accountants have bettered their own profession by making it independent of corporate interests and hopefully will bring the same to the IT profession (which I will work hard to become a member of).

Until then, it is back to writing Perl to deal with the stupidity that apps like Excel and Access breed . . .

Seek the truth, and ye will find Open Source.

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

\*/*/*/\/\*\*\*/
/*\Fairyland!\*/
\*/*/*/\/\*\*\*/

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[0x0d0a]

Hold the thought for a minute -- you're advocating *Perl* to promote replaceability and maintainability?

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[autophile]

But I quietly wait for the day when stupid managers are replaced by smatter managers

All right, someone from Boston!

--Rob

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[amplt1337]

the IT profession (which I will work hard to become a member of).

Ahh, you don't already work with computers for a living.
Well, I do. Matter of fact, I write knowledge-management perl scripts, basically munging xml files from one format to another, day-in day-out (when I'm not reading slashdot). Let me tell you, it's not because of Excel and Access that you need scripts. Data isn't inconvenient because of applications, it's inconvenient because that's the nature of data. Sure, there are things you can do to make it much, much easier to parse through $toolOfChoice, and Excel isn't very convenient if $toolOfChoice eq perl (csv format? nausea). But so long as people want to do lots of different, new, creative things with their data (and they always will, even if it's just turning it from one format to another) there will be a need to fiddle and rewrite and make changes to program logic. The fact that I've written a couple reasonably generic tools to parse my company's internal xml formats doesn't mean that all anybody needs to do is snap their fingers and get the data. There's still the problems of using and interpreting that data.

And another thing -- don't underestimate the ability of a good, well-trained Excel user to get the information s/he needs quickly. Sure, it ain't regexes, and odds are somebody who's good at it should've been learning real programming. But don't assume that a tool is nerfed just because you don't know how to use it. (I don't bother with the MS stuff myself, but I've had coworkers who were pretty impressive with it.) And for that matter, a lack of information-sharing (creating "irreplaceable employees") can happen just as easily in a shell/perl/whatever-scripted environment as opposed to one with Office macros. That's not because of Microsoft, it's because that's the nature of people. (Or have you ever tried to read an obscure and poorly commented perl script?)

to actually bring back efficiency and dignitiy to the human race by expressing human thought in a burst of insightful code ONCE, instead of mindless clicks and grunts every month, an endless cycle of futility.

... ok, you did not just imply that the dignity of the human race is somehow dependent on parsing text files.

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a failed knowlage worker who went to school to become an acountant, aren't you; and as an acountant you think that outsourceing to india is a fiscly sound investment. To deaden your guilt over puting so many people out of work you convince yourself that the unemployed will enter the field of acountancy because hey somone has to count the beans right. such a neatly ordered world view you have there.

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[Dalcius]

"...once unemployed programmers who went back to school to learn accounting and finance."

Any programmer who can call himself a programmer without shame loves reuse of code. The problem is management (surprise!).

For one, they're usually too pushy and take something never meant to be a release product and rush it to market. There are many ways this can happen, and all start with "this isn't a live product; I can hack _____ and use this quick, crappy library ____ and get it to them."

Either demos get turned into real products, pilot versions built on bad foundations get turned into products before ready, management pushes so hard that crappy hacks are all that can be done to build a product, etc.

Management, the kind that are exporting work to China and India and getting cheap results are the PROBLEM here and exporting work, in my opinion, will only make it worse.

Open source is the way to go, and the company I work for is using lots of it (OSS servers and lgpl libraries abound), but management is still a large burden to deal with.

Planning and understanding of the development process is what is needed, and most managers don't have either. Most give spotty specifications and rushed deadlines when they should be working with a process of feature integration and understand that even good developers rarely get time estimates right.

Cheers

Re:Maybe for the end user . . .

[Dalcius]

Some of the lesser attentive geeks among us aren't aware of Perl's ability to do full out OOP and its modular capabilities. It's a bit more kludgy than other languages for OOP at this moment, but just as powerful, as the company I work for is demonstrating (multi-tiered, distributed DB based web application).

Perl == scripting is a myth that needs to die.

When I was there.

[www.sorehands.com]

When I was at IBM in 97, they had instructions to move to OS/2 desktops instead of Windows unless if can be shown that you must have Windows.

Re:When I was there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. OS/2 came out in 1987, and IBM was still "moving" to it 10 years later?

Can't wait to see how this Linux "move" works out.

PL/I Sucked Way Less Than FORTRAN or COBOL

[occamboy]

Hey!

Certainly PL/I was no Delphi, but for its time, it was quite nice!

LOL!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools with open standards based equivalents."

Indeed. Sianara productivity, web access, and viewing tools.

*giggle*

Re:The crab people will soon take over!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is just another evil attempt by micro$oft to monopolize the industry

Re:The only thing worse that Slashdot trolls...

[Anonymous Coward]

My! what a hot blooded geek have we here?!

> The last time I looked MUSLIMS weren't a race!

How is this relevant?

>> I can name two worse things just off the top of my head:
>>
>> Biggots and racists

Re:Quote of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

I s'pose I could have spared 3 karma points, but WTF. Thanks, though, glad someone got the joke. ;)

Moderations tough in here - it's a rough crowd, and you can't even joke about anything other than SCO or M$. God forbid you take a humorous swipe at Linux or Apple.

talk about trolling... BOY!

[Anonymous Coward]

can you spell HYPOCRISY?

gimme an H!
gimme a Y!
gimme a P!
...
gimme a Y!!

Re:Linux on the desktop

[gnutechguy]

Wow, you can quote the Microsoft FUD site.

A MCSE, MCDST and Office Specialist? Wow again. You can open Active Directory Users and Computers and create a user, answer a telephone, and open Word docuements.

Here's a tip: "quote facts, not FUD" (TM)(C)

gnutechguy
CISSP,MCSE(NT/2000/2003),MCT,MCSA,CN E,CCA,LCP,SCNP ,CCNP,CCDA...

-----------
I will not say Do not weep! for not all tears are an evil

Re:The crab people will soon take over!

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, though without the listing. I keep those at negitive for my profile, and I want to be sure I can see people doing this to mod them down.

Hate to break it to you . . .

[Idou]

But your job sounds like a cost center. To IBM, Linux is a revenue center. Which do you think IBM is going to prioritize!?

Hope you have a change in attitude and become a little more proactive. Otherwise, I hope you don't mind doing your job with kpaint:)

Last straw: Lotus notes

[DuctTape]

A friend of mine in IBM Austin said that one of the big reasons that they didn't switch to Linux on the desktop was because Lotus Notes doesn't run on Linux.

However, as you could read from another article linked at the bottom of the original article, IBM is dropping Lotus Notes. I wonder what's going to take its place.

DT

Re:Last straw: Lotus notes

[zorak1103]

IBM wants to drop the Notes Client and move most of its functions to a java interface. I don't know if this makes things better or worse.
Some (all?) functionality of the Domino server will go somewhere into WebSphere. Again, will this be better? I don't know. Will customers follow? I don't think so (at least not very willingly).

But you can get the Notes client to run on Linux. You just have to use Wine to install and run it. IBM even has an article about it.
It's not native but works great for me.

Re:Last straw: Lotus notes

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the article says "IBM has abandoned using Lotus Notes inside the organisation" Well as everyone I know at IBM still uses notes and notes 6 is still fairly new I can say with reasonable assurance that this article is inaccurate. How innacurate I'm not sure but I wouldn't put much faith into it

Re:Last straw: Lotus notes

[Anonymous Coward]

Notes has been endangered ever since people figured out that a web browser can be used for most of the same things that the Notes Client program can be (Notes servers run quite happily under Linux). Hence Lotus Domino.

If I can avoid having to install yet another fat specialized client program on my desktop, so much the better.

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Ximian Gnome. That's what the current internal distribution used. This is not because of the Novell thing, we've been using it for about 18 months that I know of.

It's an un-modified Red Hat 7.2 2.4.9 kernal in it too.

Not sure how much I can talk about, I like my job.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not aware of any Ximian GNOME or many RedHat installations here at IBM, what division do you work at? As far as I know, SuSE 8.1 is the most common, and is what we use.

Re:Yep

[Squegie]

Lol... yes, what division do you work at? Oh, and what's your badge number/employee id? Just curious... ;}

times have changed

[CAIMLAS]

Times have changed. IBM is no longer the monolithic giant that dominates and overtakes everything - they're at the size where either significant growth or significant growth loss is fairly difficult without catastrophic catalyst. They're no longer a significant threat to the 'little guy' either, as they used to be - and as MS is now.

Think about it. IBM has quite thoroughly embraced linux, and is moving in more of that direction every day. Linux's very core philosophy is that of openess and unrestriction - the very philosophies that monopolies fight against.

The only thing (at least from the business perspective) IBM gains by embracing linux is to move the power away from MS. From that point, where does the power go?

Well, obviously, it draws power from AMD and Intel and more towards IBM for PPC processors, since linux works just fine on PPC processors, but in terms of software, they gain nothing. You can't 'take' something that is given away, as linux is.

Instead of power migrating from MS to IBM in the rise of linux, power migrates to the people - the populace and citizens. That's democracy.

Re:times have changed

[OneFix]

But couple this with the fact that IBM is one of the biggest outsourcers (specifically to IBM India), and the fact that IBM itself has stated that they will eventually drop AIX in favor of Linux...

IBM obviously doesn't make its most money on software...they make their money on hardware and support contracts...

So, it's obvious IBM doesn't care that Linux and OSS kills some of its divisions...to be honest, as far as IBM is concerned, IBM employs managers and top-level developers...everyone else is a contractor...

Re:times have changed

[evilviper]

You can't 'take' something that is given away, as linux is.

Hmmm... That sounds exactly like what AT&T did with Unix.

Re:times have changed

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM obviously doesn't make its most money on software...they make their money on hardware and support contracts...


Uuuh. have you looked at IBM's financial statements? Maybe you should look before saying stuff like this.

Re:times have changed

[clard11]

IBM makes lots of money on software. If software is a stack, with OSes at the bottom, what you should understand is that trying to make money out of OSes is like, so 80s, and IBM will never play in that game again. These days, the money is in middleware like app servers, business integration software (and areas like DB2 which are resounding business sucess stories). In the future you can bet that OSS will canablaize some of that too, but IBM will have moved on by then.

Re:The crab people will soon take over!

[Creepy Crawler]

Thank you, even though it took a -1 on your part..

That place is worse than the newsgroup alt.wesley.crusher.must.die.die.die ... At least the newsgroup was a perversion of bork bork bork.

From scratch?

[beakburke]

I don't think this makes sense from a productivity standpoint. Most of us probably believe that linux wins a TCO fight with Windows, but that would not be the case if you had to develop all your basic tools from scratch, even for IBM.

"Oh, I don't mean to speculate that they'll do it from scratch. They'll probably build on top of Redhat or SUSE."

Actually, If I were a big IT corp, I'd use Slackware or Debian (especially on non-X86) as a base for a custom distro. Redhat and SuSE/Novell are nice OOB solutions for companies that don't want to do lots of customizing, but want a well tested and supported solution that they can apply.

Re:I would move 100% to linux if

[Anonymous Coward]

or one of those rich mofos that buys the $500 video cards.

Pretty-please, mod this up!!! ;-)

[PaulBu]

Finally something positive coming out of /. ;-)

Paul B,

X11 is not the problem

[PotatoHead]

Performance is fine, features are fine. Everytime I read one of these, I grow a bit more frustrated.

The X Window system is possibly one of the best features in Linux right now, not to mention the number of applications (basically just about all of them) written to take advantage of it. The ability to remote the display is a powerful thing that allows for many compute options not easily done with single-user framebuffer based systems. (All of them are single user, unless you count some wierd dual head setup.)

We need to work harder at presenting Linux in a useable way, not stripping it to look like the other OSes out there right now.

X11 is what makes Linux a true multi-user operating system. It is a big part of where the power is. Why come all this way only to give up one of the core values?

Lets say we actually do this. All the new applications then get written for the frame buffer. Single users might gain some small benefit from a bit lower complexity (which can and will be solved in presentation), but everyone else loses. The money is in the corporate systems and that is where X11 plays hard. Application servers delivering applications to desktops over X11 are easy to administer and cost effective. Client-server just cannot compare really.

Rather than nuke one of our killer enterprise features to make Linux work for isolated single users, we need to continue to work hard at getting Linux in front of brand new users and schools. People that begin with Linux are not going to have any trouble with it. They will grow with Linux as it continues to mature, the result over time will be better for everyone.

Those running the current win32 systems are all going to want things the way they have them now. Giving that to them is not worth it because that is accepting their way at a lower cost, and that is just not what OSS is about. OSS is about powerful software with freedom built in from the beginning, not software designed around the competition.

We can continue to build Linux just the way it is now and slowly the others will either:

1.) See the light and join us,

or

2.) Continue doing what they are doing. (while paying a lot for the option of doing so)

Either way, OSS will continue as it has, which means tossing X11 (which making it an addon is doing) won't be worth it.

Linux is pretty easy now and we are only at the beginning! Lets keep it intact for a bit longer before taking such drastic measures.

Re:X11 is not the problem

[_xeno_]

The ability to remote the display is a powerful thing that allows for many compute options not easily done with single-user framebuffer based systems.

It's nice, sure - but I'd like to see one more feature added that X seems to be missing. I think it's actually possible with addon-software, but I'd like to see it better supported: remote running apps to another X11 session.

Suppose I left Mozilla running on my desktop machine in my room. I'm out somewhere else with my laptop and want to resume reading whatever where I left off. I'd like to take the currently running Mozilla and remote it from the desktop to my laptop. I currently cannot do that with X as it stands today. A much more realistic example is remoting a running GAIM.

Basically, I want "screen" for X11 but one where I can remote only one application at a time and not the entire desktop. X11 allows remote and local applications to share the same workspace, and being able to remote a running program off another computer would be very nice.

Re:X11 is not the problem

[rnd()]

Why is it that when I install Linux on faster and faster PCs (as I have over the past 5 years that I've been using Linux), that X always seems to be pretty sluggish? Wouldn't you think that in the days of 2GHz chips X would seem as zippy as Windows 98 did in 1998? This isn't meant to be a troll. Maybe I should be building it from scratch or something.

Re:X11 is not the problem

[pellaeon]

> I think it's actually possible with addon-software

It seems to be (or to have been) possible. Some time ago I looked at something called xmove (IIRC) that was supposed to be able to do just that. It was quite old software as I recall and I never got around to actually trying it. I'd google for it, but I'm lazy today ;-)

Re:X11 is not the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi.

I agree with you about X, nowadays, its the most important part of an OS for it to become popular.

But, i think that now the pourest (i dont now if this word exists) part of linux is X11. we dont have a consistent way of accesing the graphical hardware. I dont want an X interface that "eat" all my memory if i run 3 different apps. (And i run Wmaker, which doesnt "eat" so much, i cant imagine those of you who run gnome or kde).

In my opinion, we need a unified method of access. And , above all, an API for visual programming, that let us make programms that take advantage of the X power.

And i dont know if the recent news about the separation of XFree86 developers is a good one...

sorry for my english :( ....

That is a tired argument

[PotatoHead]

There is RTF and PDF that both work nicely for almost everything.

Almost everyone uses Microsoft Office right now, but every last one of them can easily do a bit of work to get some business. With IBM, I would think this bit of work would be worth it.

Make no mistake, if they do this we will see changes and it will be about time.

what desktop will they use?

[mrm677]

I've been a user of Linux since 1993. For the last 5 years or so, I've used FVWM as my window manager.

I decided to try RH9, with the Ximian Desktop, on a new Pentium4 2.0GHz 512mb RAM machine.

It makes this machine feel like a 486...very very slow and pages all the time. I think its due to Nautilus...pathetic I think.

Which makes me wonder what IBM will use? Maybe they will rock the Linux world by releasing a desktop environment that works and is free. I hope so...

KDE is nice, but I can't support it. In my academic project, we had to kill development of a program utilizing QT due to licensing. You see, due to some tricky grants, we can't GPL our project. And with the bureaucracy of academics, finding a way to acquire the QT licenses just isn't worth the hassle and resources.

Linux is great for my uses, but it just isn't there as a desktop for the masses.

Good luck IBM.

Re:what desktop will they use?

[Karma Sucks]

You don't have to GPL a Free Qt program.

BSD is more than acceptable. Pretty much anything Open Source is okay in fact for Free Qt.

bad move

[Myopic]

after the SCO lawsuit, IBM will owe them six hundred bucks per seat.

They are

[VikingBrad]

Zenworks for Linux is coming

Cheers
VikingBrad

Hmm ... I work for IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

and I run linux on my company provided laptop 99% of the time. I boot windoze once a day so I can connect to the corporate network with my vpn client and download my lotus notes email.

*If* IBM can get Lotus Notes to run easily on linux and get the vpn client to run, then the problem is 99.9% solved.

A small cog in a very large wheel

Re:Hmm ... I work for IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Both are fine. Search the internal web for NUL (Notes Under Linux) which gets wine to run Notes.

Search for mts-client (internal web) and you have something that is essentially a pluto replacement for FreeSWAN that does the different authentication (and a klips patch, but that patch is integrated in the latest FreeS/WANs).

I run linux 100% of the time on my corporate desktop and laptop, no problems.

I have not heard or seen any indication of such a move, and *HIGHLY* doubt the veracity of this memo. It would be too crippling for over a quarter of a million employees to pick up and move to any different platform. There is a supported Linux desktop distribution, but I don't think there will be any requirement to use it.

Hell, a lot of the internal sites still check browser identity string for IE, and others rely on MSIE features to function at all. Despite a stated requirement to make Mozilla *the* supported desktop browser, the web developer's give it no heed at all.

+10 Truth

[pantherace]

Thank you.

No kidding

[siskbc]

You think that memo was leaked on accident? This is the best way IBM could publicize the fact that they're "eating their own dog food". No press conferences, no big statements here. Just letting it be known.

Whoops, did I just email that to the AP wire? My bad.

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

[nt]

Great quote from Groklaw:

[Anonymous Coward]

(Slightly reworded)

What delicious irony. Bill Gates' greatest accomplishment was taking the computing monopoly from IBM. Now IBM is working to destroy the computing monopoly.

RTF

[Macrobat]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"? Even someone running Word can figure out how to open it...

No kidding. I have an entire Manual in that format.

My bet

[DaveAtFraud]

Novell bought Ximian. Novell bought SuSE. IBM invested $50M in Novell.

Any bets that IBM's corporate desktop looks a lot like Ximian running on SuSE?

Re:My bet

[OS24Ever]

Nope. It's Ximian running RedHat. 7.2 I believe, whichever one came with the 2.4.9 kernal, don't remember.

and then we have Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office setup in Wine enivornments.

It's available for installation right now, however not everyone can use it because of certain applications that require specific things they've not gotten either emulated in Wine or replaced by a non-MS Specific application.

All you need is a diskette and about an hour and you too can wipe out your Windows Thinkpad or Desktop and off you go. Most of the engineering places that don't need a lot of the more verticle type applications like the Watson Labs and other labs have fully flipped to linux.

It's us types in the marketing/sales/customer facing environments that need specific apps that are holding us a back a bit.

Plus there's been no mandate. We all joke about it at tech conferences (I'm on the xSeries side) and such because everyone had 'heard' of this type of memo and a lot of our guys closer to using Linux more (IE not in the midwest but east and west coasts) have already converted over.

Most run VMware workstation to fire up windows on the rare opportunity that they need them. And the last guy I talked to about it as far back as August said he rarely ever needed to fire up Windows any more.

Re:My bet

[Anonymous Coward]

well about 50% BS... I suppose I shouldn't be surprised for someone admiting to be in "marketing/sales".

It's true the current system is RH based and all you need is a floppy and time to blast winders, but it's newer than 7.2... has been 9.0 for a while, like since about a week after 9.0 went gold. After RH's decision to bend their customers over a barel every half tptb started looking for another base... there's lots of speculation and no hard data about what it will be.

The assertion that anyone has fully switched to linux is absurd. Not even the LTC is fully linux on the desktop... sure most of the engineers in the LTC use it, but there are some that don't... and practically none of the managers, project managers, etc. As for other development labs, huge portions of the eServer development shops are still on aix... with a larger percentage using vnc from winders desktops to access big shared aix boxen for their work.

As for that geographic BULL SHIT... I don't even know where to begin with that. A HUGE volume of the companies Linux work doesn't even take place in the US, let alone along one of the coasts. Hell I think there is LESS linux work on the coasts than there is anywhere else, beaverton excluded.

Re:My bet

[winse]

along those same lines there is a
job opening at Novell currently that reads in part:
The Integrated Linux Desktop combines SUSE, the
Ximian desktop (XD2), the Open Office suite,
the Evolution Client, plus a host of clients
for traditional Novell services, such
as iPrint, iFolder, Messenger, GroupWise, and
others. It will be managed through a
combination of Red Carpet and Zen for
Desktops technology. The desktop product will
release twice a year beginning in June 2004.

perhaps IBM will trade up a little in June or the end of the year release.

Re:My bet

[OS24Ever]

Dude. Who peed in your cornflakes this morning?

I said and I quote 'Marketing/Sales/Customer facing types' note the end word.

great, it's 9.0 based. But guess what, in my aformentioned note I mentioned it was August mind you. At that time, as the distro was explained to me it was 7.2 (unmodified kernal) with Ximian Gnome.

Not knowing what you do for a living at IBM since you posted anonymously, I'm wondering if you know some of the xSeries people that do linux daily for customer. I'm not much of a name dropper but there are guys on our team that set up WETA's cluster, Shell's clusters, and I myself worked on the first one at UNM. A lot of us have run linux exclusively on the desktop with VMware as a stop gap should we need winders.

I myself converted to XP because there were several times I needed to fire up VMware (pre-standard load mind you, I just installed RH 7.3 and Ximian and found a few things on the LTC Sourceforge internal site) but if I was in front of a customer the time it took Windows to boot up, and the lack of the ability to figure out how to get power saving features (like suspend, etc) to work in 2002 had me decide to stop using it. My local LUGs weren't able to help me so I decided to forget it and move on. I'm told things are much different now that someone who has time to tinker and hack the code made power saving work and I've been wanting to try again on my new X30.

In August we had our annual tech conference and that is when I got my last 'field' update from guys who were using linux - exclusively - on their Thinkpad T30s. Also I'd participated in several conference calls where an IGS person described our environment and he specifically said RH 7.2 was our base code. he also mentioned that most of our labs were running it. When I think labs I think our engineering staff, not the management staff. So since I don't try to install operating systems on my thinkpad weekly basis I've not watched to see if/when we changed to RH 9.0. The nice thing about open source and it's bane (for a business trying to set a standard for say a desktop) is you can be out of date within 4 months rather badly.

As for your last comment, I'm confused. I don't remember claiming that I was talking for IBM there. I remember saying in my experience and the people I work with the people that had more customers running linux and more daily exposure (which, indeed happen on the east and west coasts of the United States, and not where I've been the last 5 years in Kansas City and the SW US other than the Univ. of Mexico and places in Houston). Not sure how that equiates to geographic bullshit. I don't talk to people on the other side of the planet often, I wish I coulud, but I can't because I sleep at night.

I guess you might be thinking wrong on the amt of linux in the inferior US. There are some serious GRID projects in the NE and there are lots of render farms on the west coast. Granted nothing the size that the NZ folks have but there are lots of blade render farms going into Hollywood.

And for the record, I'm not a complete marketroid I somehow managed to get my RHCE in 2001, and a MCSE in 1995 and a CNE in 1994. Note that transcender and those didn't exist back then. So yeah I can install and troubleshoot just about anything but I sure as hell can't write code.

More apps to come?

[Maltese Falcon]

According to this article, IBM currently has 320,000 employees. With these numbers (I'll assume 1 system per employee avg.) and their clout/connection with ISVs, this is bound to ensure more business apps ported to Linux. I'm sure as a result of this, M$'s competitors will now be chomping at the bit to port to Linux to sell to IBM plus get them to promote their wares.

RTF

[ThatsLoseNotLoose]

If you still have that document, just for grins, try opening the doc in openoffice and then save it as RTF. I've had word make some monster rtf's only to have OO reduce it to a third the size or less. To shave more fat off, go into the document properties and deselect APPLY USER DATA.

Although I suppose a 5 meg word file contains some tricky shit and OO won't open it properly anyways, it's always an interesting experiment.

Has anyone here seen PL/1 or used JCL.

[Anonymous Coward]

No but I have used an IBM PC.

Well...

[www.sorehands.com]

It did come out in 1987, but that was in conjunction with MicroSoft. I first used it in 1988 on a Wang PC, but it would not officially be able to run on non-IBM systems. In 1992 (maybe 91) IBM releaased OS/2 2.0 and had the smoke and mirrors show at the Windows/OS/2 show in Boston.

Hmm...

[Greyfox]

Someone there finally took a look at OpenOffice and decided it sucks less than Lotus Notes... and has for about 3 releases (Staroffice .3pre-alpha no doubt sucked less than Lotus Notes. Super Human software my ass...)

So does that mean that Lotus will now be developing Linux apps, or is IBM just going to admit that was a $6 Billion blunder, spin them off and finally get on with life?

Are they going to try to port RETAIN from MVS to Linux?

Does this mean there will be up-to-date Linux versions of the assorted Rational software?

Re:Hmm...

[clard11]

Are they going to try to port RETAIN from MVS to Linux?

This makes no sense. This is about changing the clients IBMers use. RETAIN users switching from WinXP to Linux will just need a 3270 emulator. There are GUI clients, but they are java based, so will just need a JVM on the Linux client.

Nice. VERY NICE.

[IntergalacticWalrus]

If there's any company who can successfully push Linux to the desktop, it's IBM. Now, where's that OS/2 compatibility layer? :)

IBM selling Linux Desktops?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, IBM doesn't actually sell
Linux on their laptops and Intel based desktops.
If they think it works internally, why not
offer Linux solutions to customers?

Exchange replacement for linux?

[spectro]

Try Oracle Collaboration Suite... comes with a pretty powerful calendar engine.

Re:Exchange replacement for linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yah, that will happen, Hilary Clinton will win the Republican party nomination for President in 2004 too...

IBM has held it's nose and put MS products on most employees desktops for the last little while because bascially they had no practical alternative. That is clearly starting to change. But whatever mild distaste they have for dealing with Microsoft it is minor compared to the open loathing for all things Oracle. They do what they have to do with Oracle to keep joint Oracle/IBM customers happy but hell will freeze over before an IBM employee uses an Oracle product for internal purposes if anything that even smells like an alternative exists.

Re:Exchange replacement for linux?

[OS24Ever]

IBM switch to that? hell already froze once last year (iTunes for Windows) don't think it can take that again so soon

Oh boy, here we go again

[A nonymous Coward]

Yet another idiotic complaint that X11 is holding Linux back.

The other replies to this handle the technical details fine. All I have to add is that I have been using X11 for years on funky 386s and up and never felt the GUI was any kind of bottleneck. If it worked fine on a 33Mhz 386, even if the screen wasn't as big, why the dickens won't it work on 3Ghz Pentiums and Opterons? Why is it that as processors and memory get faster and faster, more oddballs come out of the woodworks screaming about what a pig dog X11 is?

My predictions coming true

[solprovider]

Since early last year, I have predicted the fall of MS for the end of 2004. For that to happen, I predicted:
1. A major IT company will pick a Linux desktop environment and start investing until it far surpasses the others, making the other desktop environments into novelty programs.
2. A major non-IT company will announce the switch to Linux by March 2004, thus insuring that MS will crash by the end of 2004
3. On a different note, I feel IBM is attempting to kill Lotus Notes as part of a misguided attack on Sun.

This article states that IBM is fully moving to Linux desktops. One of the links at the bottom was that IBM will stop using Notes internally, although from personal knowledge I know IBM is still migrating to Notes6.

My current relevant thoughts are:
1. IBM using desktop Linux means they will need it to be fully functional for their needs. They have the resources to make it so. The article does not mention which desktop was chosen. Another post suggests IBM uses Gnome, but does anyone know the official policy? IBM was my first choice for the decision-maker. Once they make the decision, their chosen desktop will become the desktop of choice for the world.

2. With a Fortune 100 company like IBM switching, we can expect a large non-IT company to follow soon. There are only 2 months to go before my deadline.

3. I believe that most business application belong on the Notes platform. I do not believe the Notes client needs to be part of the solution; the benefits of Notes' rapid application development are still realized when using a browser as the client. The Notes client has better handling of RichText, but I do not believe business data should be stored in RichText. The Notes client is fully integrated with email, and the Notes6.5 client is fully integrated with Sametime, the Notes IM client; losing these abilities will cause difficulties for IBM.

The big issue is that the Notes development client (Notes Designer) has yet to be ported to Linux. Without Notes Designer, there is no development. The Notes server (Domino) was ported to Linux by a rogue, and that has turned out well. Hopefully there is still enough flexibility in the IBM-controlled Notes platform team that the Notes clients, including Notes Designer, will be ported soon.

I have difficulty believing that IBM can finish the move to the Linux desktop without a Notes client for Linux. Their current culture is based on the ubiquitous and constant use of Sametime. Without the Notes client on Linux, their non-technical employees will need a replacement. Even if the Notes client is not ported, they must port a Sametime client to allow management and everybody else who moves to Linux to continue to communicate with those who have not been migrated.

I dream about IBM porting the Notes client to Linux. With the current situation, if IBM does not do the port soon, then IBM will falter as their ability to communicate internally diminishes.

X11 is not the problem-shot across the bow.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Performance is fine, features are fine. Everytime I read one of these, I grow a bit more frustrated."

The better question is "why are we seeing them to begin with?"

"X11 is what makes Linux a true multi-user operating system. It is a big part of where the power is. Why come all this way only to give up one of the core values?"

<conspiracy mode on>
Because it would benefit Microsoft to do so.
</conspiracy mode off>

"We need to work harder at presenting Linux in a useable way, not stripping it to look like the other OSes out there right now."

The KDE people are going to hate you.

"Rather than nuke one of our killer enterprise features to make Linux work for isolated single users..."

The Enterprise methadology will work it's way down to the single users, albeit scaled down.
NAS for consumers anyone?

For public consumption

[bfree]

Excuse me for still having some scepticism in my brain, but if I was running IBM, I would have already set as much of this up as feasible by the back door and then announce publically that I was going to do it on a quite short timeframe. Then when I succeed I can go to other companies "look, it's predictable and safe". Companies hate change, employees hate change, it's risky or just plain annoying so if you really want to get the huge organisations to take this sort of a change seriously, you are going to have to be able to provide serious evidence.

Leaving scepticism (which was fueled by a comment refering to a base desktop build which already exists in IBM) aside, this is so logical it's simple! If IBM transfer their own business over to IBM's own software across the board, then they have a constantly provable business environment which they can sell and support on their own hardware. They can return to selling one stop shops, but by basing the underlying systems (as far as they commit to) on Free software, they completely disarm the feeling of being forced to choose between evils, you can choose a potential evil and feel free to walk away (well you might be replacing lots of hardware if you completely drop them) with your system. IBM could effectively start getting end customers to foot the bill for Free software development by IBM and the more of that work they are doing, the more of the work they are likely to get. The rules (well the licenses of most software they would be likely to use) prevent a monopoly, but IBM's power is huge and hence it could attract business to a monopolistic level, at least until a new tiger appears which can take it on in the newly expanded market. IBM don't need software licensing revenue, IBM can exist for the rest of time on it's name provided they can provide people with dependable solutions (i.e. they can charge a profit margin others would dream of, just because it's IBM).

What dissappoints me is that this all makes me recall many moments while I worked for Corel International Linux Support when I tried making people see the benefits of eating our own dogfood. I truly felt (though I mattered squat) they should have moved the next (or following if already too late) version of their Office and Draw suites to QT (or gtk, I only really say qt as they had already committed to KDE on the desktop and had peeople working on it) and start consolidating on their work. They were deciding what system to buy for the Linux Support desk, and I asked why they didn't just adopt a free one! Moving over all their hosting to Linux was another issue and one that was more important in their minds (and judging by netcraft it seems they achieved something there I wasn't expecting anymore). It was interesting however to watch the various reactions from managers to administrators, support staff to developers when they realised they had a bit of a Free software zealot in their midst! I even managed to get in my digs at visiting big-wigs (something makes me think that isn't why Corel left the country though). Corel had an opportunity, but they didn't even try (in fact I wonder why they even bothered starting with Linux if they weren't going to go down this route).

IBM would have to be insane not to try this. Really it is a case of when they feel they should make the jump to best effect, and if IBM feel that now is the time to do it, you can be sure it is very doable (for them) because egg on the face here could cost IBM massively and for a long time. I can't help feel that this has been in the works ever since they lost out on OS/2 and if the MS V Linux "Get The Facts" can be taken as evidence that MS is scared, this should be taken as evidence that MS should be petrified! If IBM do follow through with this, the impact in having all the IBM employees worldwide proficient with GNU/Linux/X/??/?? would be significant apart from the developments you would be sure would be seen in each piece o

Re:For public consumption

[jswalter9]

One comment: for a company of IBM's size, two years is a VERY short time to switch every desktop to a different OS. I work for a much smaller company and our estimates are that a switch like that would have to happen in a phased implementation over AT LEAST two years.

But Peace means War

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you're either a Muslim or have never read the Quran or both. The book is choc full of lines like these:

"But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem."
and "When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them."
and "And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith."
and "As for those who disbelieve in Our communications, We shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned, We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement; surely Allah is Mighty, Wise."
and " O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil) ."
and "God hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Quran: and who is more faithful to his covenant than God? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme."
and "Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world's life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward."

You have to understand that the word "peace" in Arabic means nothing like how what you know it as in European languages. It means submission to authority. Islam as a religion of peace means submission to the will of god, meaning following the Quran and the dictates of Islamic society.

The fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity is that whereas Christianity merely has a few spotty things to say about Jews & certain groups, the Quran regularly tells its followers to fight for god, not "turn the other cheek". Now you can go on as you like about the goodness of Islam as political correctness dictates, but please have a clue as to what the religion is actually about. Oh, and the Quran compares the Jews to donkeys.

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

I'm not a follower of any religion, but I've read "all" the nice and shiny little books - including the Quran. Do you want me to cite passages from the holy books of Judaism or Christianity where Jahwe/God wants the foreskins from the enemies?

The God in the "Old Testament" (for the X:ites), the jewish Jahwe and Allah are all equally cruel - BECAUSE IT'S THE SAME GOD. ... the stories are the same, the books are the same. Guess what - most of the religion is also the same. Mohammed interpreted it a lot later than Christ did, and for quite some time Islam was the most modern religion of those three. Nowadays it's not, but trying to portray it as being "more violent" is just plain stupid.

Oh, and the Quran compares the Jews to donkeys.

And the Bible says that _everyone_ except God's own little tribe are barbarians and can be freely killed when wanting the land God "gave" to them.

Re:But Peace means War

[cxvx]

The fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity is that whereas Christianity merely has a few spotty things to say about Jews & certain groups, the Quran regularly tells its followers to fight for god, not "turn the other cheek".

You might want to check up on the bible: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/enemi es.html .

There sure is a lot of love going on in those quotes.

Re:But Peace means War

[Anonymous Coward]

>And the Bible says that _everyone_ except God's >own little tribe are barbarians and can be
>freely killed when wanting the land God "gave"
>to them.

Uh, Canaan was a bad neighborhood and the inhabitants were given a chance to leave, but most decided to fight instead. Context is everything.

Even hundreds of years before the invasion of Canaan, God had told Abraham that the sins of the people living in the land had not reached its limit, but when the inhabitants had defiled the land to its limit, the land was going to "throw them up." In fact, God later warned the nation of Israel to be careful in not repeating the sins of the previous people, otherwise the land was going to throw them up too.

From a reading of Hebrew scriptures, we see that God was using Israel as an instrument of His justice to purge the land of its sinfulness and later in history God used other nations like the Assyrians and the Babylonians as His instruments to cleanse the land by destroying and banishing the people of Israel for their sinfulness.

However, when one reads the early accounts of the prophet Muhammad's raids and wars, not only one sees no mention of the theme of divine holiness and its opposition to sin, but the primary motivations that one constantly encounters are the looting of enemies or conquering the enemies and spreading the rule of the prophet.

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

... if you believe in any one of these religions you are biased and not qualified to compare.

I see no difference between the tribal god of the earlier Jews (not to be mistaken with the omnipotent God it later evolves to) calling everyone else "barbarians" to justify taking their land and other tribal wars justified by Mohammeds interpretations of _the same God's_ will.

Note: I don't believe in any of these religions, however, a lot of the actual history portrayed is true.

Re:But Peace means War

[Mr Guy]

Then you sir, are an idiot.

Whether or not you believe in the premise (God is good, God exists, pretty much anything about the divine inspiration at all), it only takes a 7th grade reading level to understand the contextual evidence that the writers believed there was a difference.

The difference is well state above, but I will again clarify. Allah in the Torah instructs the Isrealites to smite certain foes, at certain times, for certain reasons. This is converted to Judeo-Christian belief with the addition of the prophet who announces that believers should no longer value their lives above others, and encourages his followers to demonstrate love by willing to die. On the other hand, Islamic belief entitles you to kill any nonbelievers, for any reason, at any time.

Whether or not you agree with the motivations, a specific order to kill is not the same as a broad mandate to purge the world.

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

... purge it from the barbarians? Sure it is - it is exactly the same view of others.

Christ was the prophet who talked about being friendly, God himself always ok'd killing everyone not agreeing with you (if you believed in It, this killing everyone not agreeing with It).

We're down to semantics now. Interesting, isn't it? There's absolutely no more "violence" in the Quran compared to the Torah/Old testament. People claiming "Islam does this and Islam does that" seldom know anything about Islam, and mistake ancient traditions that has nothing to do with the religion with Islam itself.

People in Europe are a bit more open-minded than in the US - which fits well when viewing Scientific American's map of modernity where the Nordic countries (with Sweden in the lead) tops the list. We see "God bless America" and "Allah Akhbar" being the same thing, and that the war between ignorant people in the US and ignorant followers of bin Laden being equally stupid. /me - Swedish

Re:But Peace means War

[renderhead]

"if you believe in any one of these religions you are biased and not qualified to compare"

Likewise, if you live in Europe, or America, or any country in the world, you are biased and not qualified to compare Sweden to America. ;)

Besided, this idealized "European" who is more open-minded than the Americans is on the same continent as the 3 or more influential countries that have or are in the process of passing laws forbidding the wearing of headscarves in public institutions. Open-minded, indeed.

Re:But Peace means War

[DeekGeek]

Someone went to a lot of trouble on that page to demonstrate their ignorance and lack of logical thinking skills.

Comparing two quotes made by Jesus to a series of verses from Psalms and Lamentations, and one verse in 1st Corinthians is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

1. The statements in Matthew and Luke were made by Jesus (God incarnate). The statements in Psalms, Lamentations, and 1 Corinthians were made by humans that followed God.
2. When you take the statements in the right-hand column in context, you will discover that the person writing them (in the case of Psalms and Lamentations) was essentially pouring his heart out to God. Asking, hoping, praying, or looking for justice or divine vengence is different from God giving a mandate for you to do it yourself.
3. The verse in 1 Corinthians carries a very different message than any of the others, and really doesn't belong in the list at all. This usage of the word "anathema" would more accurately be translated as "cursed". Since God is the only one that can really curse a person, this goes back to my previous point about the difference between God acting against a person vs. telling other humans to do it. See also my next point regarding the translation.
4. The verses cited suffer from a lack of clarity, since they are using language forms that most English speaking people no longer use (the King's English, circa A.D. 1600, as used in the King James' Version).
5. Even if we ignore the context problem that arises from using verses in Psalms and Lamentations, the changes that Jesus Christ made during his ministry made many of the rules in the Old Testament moot. His command to love our enemies superceded any previous command to the contrary (had there been one that wasn't specific to a particular situation). That only leaves the verse from 1 Corinthians, and I've already refuted that one.

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

Please let me know which countries that would be. I know of France banning public wearing of _any_ religious symbols in class - not the same thing as what you wrote.

Don't get me started on the US and creationism ...

Re:But Peace means War

[renderhead]

When I said "head scarves in public institutions," that was a broad statement that covered several situations. Most of the laws do refer to any and all conspicuous religious symbols, which I still just as intolerant as if head scarves were the only thing banned. They are discriminating against anyone who practices a religion instead of against a particular religion.

My examples are:
France, with the law you mentioned.
Germany, who is dealing with similar laws (I admit ignorance as to whether the laws already exist or if they're just being proposed)
The Netherlands, where hospital workers in Brussels are forbidden for wearing religious clothing on the job.

And most American schools don't teach creationism. We have something called "states' rights", under which individual states can set their own public school curriculum, so you need to examine that issue on a state-by-state basis, not as an "American" issue.

Re:But Peace means War

[johnnyb]

"calling everyone else "barbarians" to justify taking their land"

I understand your point, but the fact is that, in the Old Testament, God was very picky about who Israel fought. There were many foreigners whom God told the Israelites not to touch because God had given those people their land just like God had given the Israelites their land. It was not "us" verse "everyone else". God had interacted with several of the nations, and found favor with many of them, and did not find favor with others. There were many people that Israel wanted to fight that God said "no" to, and many people God wanted Israel to fight that Israel said "no" to.

Re:But Peace means War

[rwesterv]

Hmm.. But as I recall, Christians and Jews aren't considered 'pagans'; or classed totally as 'unbelievers'. Islam is based upon the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the writings of Mohammed (sp?) (the Quran). And Jews and Christians are refered to by him in his writings as 'People of the Book'; just like the followers of Islam. Now that might not make them part of the immediate family, but according to those writings, they ARE relatives, of a sort. Perhaps, from his point of view, a bit misguided, but not enemies. Of course, some of the dealings between western 'civilization' and the Middle East could hardly be considered a conversation between friends; the Crusades would definitely not give an impression of 'friendliness'. However, even though religion was 'involved' (at least the organization of religion - read church hierarchy); it's also true that, in many places, communities of Jews and early Christians co-habited peacefully with surrounding Muslims; at least until that point.

Re:But Peace means War

[johnnyb]

"God himself always ok'd killing everyone not agreeing with you"

Nope. There were several instances where God ok'd this, but it was definitely not a universal sanction. Specifically Israelites were required not to marry people of foreign Gods, and were not to worship these Gods, but these people were allowed to live among the Israelites and the Israelites were _required_ to treat them with equity, because at one time they had been foreigners living in a foreign land.

Also, on a side point, there are many places in the Bible where foreign worship would be recognized as worshipping the one true God. For example, Melchizedek, who was a foreign priest, worshiped El Elyon (Abraham worshipped Yahweh), but Abraham recognized him as God's priest, and gave him a tenth of everything he owned.

So, anyway, I would say that your summary is by far incorrect. God, at certain times, ok'd killing off entire civilizations. However, in the general case, this was not ok.

Re:But Peace means War

[johnnyb]

"I know of France banning public wearing of _any_ religious symbols in class"

Forced secularization. Wow.

It appears secular humanism is the new world religion.

Re:But Peace means War

[elefantstn]

For being such a high-minded European, you're quite a bigot.

Re:But Peace means War

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to mispell it, it's Xians, not X:ites. (X being the Greek letter Chi, the first letter of CHrist.

Also, you must have missed the book of Jonah. The one where Yaweh sends Jonah to Ninevah (Israel's hated enemy) in order to save the Ninevites from destruction.

Exactly how much did you study before arriving at your conclusions? Oh, you arrived at the conclusion first, then backfilled the evidence. I thought so.

Re:But Peace means War

[cayenne8]

But, we don't follow the old testament...just the New One.

Re:But Peace means War

[stephenbooth]

Actually the Quaran doesn't call the Jews donkeys anyway. I've searched the Quran for the word Donkey and it only appears twice. The nearest it gets is in 'Al Jumua' where it likens those who claim to follow Mosaic law but fail to do so to donkeys who carry books but fail to understand them. It's not the being Jewish that's the problem, it's claiming to be Jewish but not following the Jewish scriptures. The other is in 'Al-Baquara' where Allah is exhorting the masses to look at the prosperity they enjoy under his patronage.

Stephen

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

So no schools in the US ban "gang symbols" on clothing?

There's no difference between being in a gang or adhering to a religion, when it comes to tension. The solution is the same in both cases.

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

You do? And which sect would that be?

Remember, Jesus was a Jew. Paul created Christianity. Who is your "God"?

Re:But Peace means War

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, stating that Jesus was just a prophet negates the fundamental tenet of Christianity: that Jesus was God incarnate, not just some messenger. Jesus, as God, changed the whole 'eye for eye' schema and replaced it with unconditional love for all men.

Islam is an interpretation of God based on the teachings of the "Prophet Mohammed". Even though Mohammed came much later after Jesus, he still decided to keep many of the old ideas.

Re:But Peace means War

[twinpot]

he Netherlands, where hospital workers in Brussels are forbidden for wearing religious clothing on the job.

Damn, I must've been away when The Netherlands conquered Belgium..... :-)

Re:But Peace means War

[Silburn_Luke]

I think you meant Belgium when you said The Netherlands. No idea if you're correct about the hospital workers thing, but since you can't get the country right then I think its fair to say I'm sceptical.

Regards
Luke

Re:But Peace means War

[Anonymous Coward]

I freely admit not knowing much about Islam, which is why, when the Muslim Students Association at my school (University of Toronto) organized a lecture on "Understanding Islam" shortly after 911, I went to hear it. The lecturer wasn't very convincing in my view. He was often emotional at the expense of logic and quick to berate Bush, which is not the best way to win your audience (although quite a few people may agree with him).

His best example of why Islam is a peace-loving, tolerant religion was that a Muslim is allowed to do commercial dealings with a Christian or even a Jew, but not with an atheist or agnostic. Someone from the audience asked him how is this discrimination against agnostics a sign of tolerance, but he couldn't offer a good answer.

I also remember that in my school's debating club there are mostly Jewish students. I love debating, and was quite apalled when an Arab student came in at one of our meetings and started to tell us that what we're doing is bad and he knows that all we do is badmouth Muslims, etc. etc.

Finally, in a History of Art written in the '30s by a French medic, there is a chapter on religion. The author considers the Islam to be a "fatalist" religion.

All these have reenforced my opinion that Muslims are more predisposed to quick, radical actions and less likely to sit down, discuss and negotiate. This is bad. Think only how the world would be like today if only Arafat would have negotiated the Israeli offer at Camp David, instead of simply abandoning the negotiations without a word...

Re:But Peace means War

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Fine, we won't get you started on the US and creationism since you don't know shit about the US except what you read. There's plenty of educated people here as well but like any good keyboard revolutionary you only choose to believe what you choose to read. I was agreeing with you (first time) on the religion argument but to label the US like that is bullshit.
Let me enlighten you... We have EVERYTHING in the US. It really is a melting pot. Sure we have right wing creationist idiots. We also have the ACLU. We have Muslims, Jews, you name it. I serve with both in the military. I grew up on a 34,000 acre cattle ranch in Wyoming and I serve with guys who grew up in an apartment in New York City.
Typecasting the US like that is about like me labeling all of Europe Neo Nazis because of Europe's recent problem with those assholes.

Re:But Peace means War

[Vintermann]

No, but it's been in France for a long time now. From what I read it looks like their primary motive is annoying muslims, perhaps in order to appeal to xenophobic voters.

There was a "human rights group" advocating the same in Norway. I wrote a letter to a newspaper, it actually got through. It's on my weblog at http://vintermann.paranoidkoala.org/

Okay, that was a shameless self-plug.

Re:But Peace means War

[johnnyb]

Your editorial was excellent. It was brief and to the point.

"Forcing believeing children to give the impression that they are not believing, why is that any better than the opposite?"

Yes! One thing that people do not realize is that school, at least in the US, is a forced activity from 8 to 3 - 7 hours. This is usually more time than is spent with the family. The results of this are

* Children are starting to give more credence to their school acquaintences than their family
* Whatever moral instruction is or isn't applied at school is essentially de facto present or absent from the child's life
* Whatever cultural practices are or aren't applied at school are essentially de facto present or absent from the child's life
* The context and viewpoint of learning is whatever the state says it is, and there is no such thing as neutrality

This is setting us up for a huuuuge problem - state-run religion, or state-run secularization, as it may be. In addition, it is the replacement of the family with the school, making children essentially accept whatever propoganda is being taught in the schools.

"Or that the state should be able to influence the children in a neutral manner through the schools? If so, who gets to decide what's neutral?"

There is not, nor will there ever be, a neutral standpoint.

Don't decend to the same level as MS

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you thing the best thing for IBM to do is effectively ignore all the good things that Linux/Unix has, and develop to a target that directly competes weakness for weakness against Windows ?

Do you work at Redmond, or have you just missed the point of Unix ?

IBM office suite

[solprovider]

I work with a company that has IBM as its largest customer. Before IBM killed SmartSuite, the people who communicated with IBM were forced to use SmartSuite. Since IBM declared SmartSuite dead, using MSOffice has become acceptable, and sometimes required.

I would not call 123 or Wordpro "crappy programs". They both were easier to use than MSOffice, and had many features that MSOffice does not have or does not do well.

Those people still use Lotus Notes. This is a good thing because we are able to use Notes for other applications that improve the business but would not exist if the cost of development was not so low because Notes is already available. We are planning our upgrade to Notes6 because IBM is finishing their upgrade and we need to stay current with IBM.

I have been recommending they start using Linux for the past year. Their IT director only knows MS, and gets very upset at the thought that anything else is valid. He also said that he wanted to replace the Wintel-based IBM and Compaq servers because they were incompatible with his Wintel-based Dell servers; I have little respect for his opinion, but I also have little influence. I really hope that this move by IBM will force my client to consider Linux desktops.

Compression in MSWord

[solprovider]

Your post confused me.

I tried to RTFify a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB. The resultant rtf was over 200 MB.

MSWord bloats documents. I have seen 100KB text documents become 200KB RTF documents when adding formatting, then become 2MB documents when saved as a MSWord DOC file. The same text must exist in all three. The formatting adds some markup. MSWord adds tons of extra overhead.

I do not use MSWord enough to know if there are options for compression. Even if MSWord uses compression, what compression routine frees 97.5% of the size? I have seen databases compress 80%; I have never seen compression better than 95%.

I am not stating you are wrong, just asking how those numbers are possible. I look forward to your informative answer.

---
As far as using templates to create documents, nobody is suggesting you stop using them, just that you save/send the document in a more ubiquitous format than MSWord's DOC.

A big deal because of folks like you

[0x0d0a]

This is actually also a big deal because of folks like you.

If there are suddenly thousands of talented researchers and developers moved to Linux, there is a sudden influx of people who now can scratch any itch that bothers *them* during their daily work. Perhaps they don't like something about their web browser -- they can just whip up a patch and send it in. They don't have to put up with the problem, and everyone else benefits.

Open Source Software is a positive feedback loop.

Totally

[PotatoHead]

I want that too. Personally, I would leave a bunch of apps running on a home machine for access wherever I happen to be that day.

Re:Totally

[fr0dicus]

You guys have heard of VNC, right?

Re: KDE people are going...

[PotatoHead]

to hate me.

Hope not, because I use KDE often. (Thanks guys!)

Well, I have written about them in the past regarding speed and bloat. They are getting through that nicely today.

I don't mind people making winalike desktops, as long as I can theme them. I do mind taking a nice multi-user OS and turning it into a single user one for no good reason.

IBM Ethics

[Brendor]

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

Damn Straight. IBM's history can be found here , starting with the companies that preceded and merged to form big blue.

I was not too familliar with them before I read this, and I was suprised with the almost benevolent efficiency they seem to have mastered over the past century. Of course my source is biased - horses mouth and 20/20 hindsight- but it cannot be denied that IBM tries to help their employees, community while they are sponsoring those company singing troupes and earning those billions and billions.

There are numerous possible parallels to the current linux situation. IBM aggressively seeks new technologies in every direction and is not afraid to abandon older tech, even core businesses like the scales and IIRC, cash registers.

IBM isn't just boosting Linux becasue they wanna piss off MS and score some PR. They are doing so because they see a competetive advantage to earl adoption.

Disclaimer -My first PC was a IBM PS II 286 (DOA monitor, win 3.1), now on a dual ghz g4. I've never run a dedicated linux box.

Sluggish how?

[PotatoHead]

What part(s) of the process from application launch through application interaction and close are sluggish?

Launch time, window moves, dialogs? Be detailed in your answer.

(I am serious too.)

Re:Sluggish how?

[cartman]

I'll throw in an answer here, even though I'm not the person you were asking. I'll share what it's like to use X on my 600mhz p3 box w/ 512MB.

1. Launching a typical application (mozilla or openoffice) takes about 1-2 minutes, even when the application is entirely cached in RAM. On Windows, this takes <0.5 seconds on far older hardware (k6/2-350mhz).

2. Resizing a window looks like complete shit, because the resizing drags behind my mouse movements by several seconds. On windows, this is completely instantaneous on far older hardware, even if I jerk the mouse back and forth as fast as I can.

3. Moving windows takes visible time.

4. Opening new windows takes several seconds. Again, completely instantaneous on windows years ago.

Bear in mind that this is not something specific to my box. This has been the case on every box running XFree that I've ever encountered. The problem has not gone away with more modern hardware; On ~2GHz boxes, it's just gotten somewhat better.

To me this is the huge reason not to use linux on the desktop. I just can't stand waiting every time the screen needs to redraw, or every time I launch an app.

I believe that the casual users who try linux as a desktop, will dump it for precisely this reason. All gui manipulations are instantaneous on Mac or Win, and have been for many years; whereas XFree is so damn sluggish that it's extremely irritating.

This defect greatly outweighs the benefits of network transparency! If I need to do some administration work from remote I can use a shell. (I do almost all administrative work using the shell anyway). People want a gui for desktop apps, and with desktop apps what they really want is responsiveness.

Re:Sluggish how?

[INT 21h]

Agree about starting mozilla and openoffice, but then I use galeon and firebird, and latex for writing things.

As for the rest: haven't been troubled by it since I used Enlightenment (13?) on a P200. Furthermore I've dropped Gnome and KDE. Those have a rather impressive footprint.

Re:Sluggish how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, thanks anyway for piping in! Completely useless as you comments were in this discussion, dear totally marginal user.

Re:Sluggish how?

[swv3752]

1) Sure pick the some of the slowest apps to load. Loading time is application dependant. Compare OOo on the same hardware running Linux and Windows. the time to load will approximately be the same, so that is not an X11 issue.

2) Works fine for me. And I'm not talking about my 2Ghz desktop but my 366mhz Celeron with 192mb RAM. Now both of tht be a driver issue. That does happen regardless of platform, just talk to any ATI card owner from a couple of years ago.
hese are running the OSS ATI drivers, and I have heard of some issues with some other drivers dependaing of the version fot he drivers. It mig
3) See two.

4) I have never seen that issue. I have been using Linux on a desktop for 6 years now. I hit ctrl-n in Mozilla and a new window spawns instantly. Same in Konqueror. I go File-> New in Abiword and get a new window instantly. Maybe this is also a driver issue, or maybe just the app you are using.

X worked on my 8mb RAM 66mhz Agenda VR3. It was just as snappy as a Clie (or Palm) running from a memory card. Basically a second delay or so because it loaded apps from flash memory. X itself is not slow. Your drivers may not be optimized, your installition may be fubared, or you are just using the slowest apps in the world. Maybe the Window Manager or Desktop may have problems. I remember E being kinda ugly resizing windows.

Re:Sluggish how?

[cayenne8]

I've got pretty much the same hardware as this guy...running Gentoo, and KDE. I have absolutely NOTHING running as slow as this. Sure, it isn't as immediate as my P4 1.7 Ghz....but, on my P3 600, with I think 256M ram (gotta go look again)...things aren't slow at all. Firing up Mozilla or Open Office takes about 10-20 seconds....

Now, if I have a couple of Konqueror windows up with 3-6 tabs in each, running Grip and playing XMMS..sure, things slow a bit, but, appreciably like the person here described.

Re:Sluggish how?

[rnd()]

Well, application launch time is not an issue. But application interaction seems sluggish: The time it takes for a 2d button to go down and up seems way too slow. Also, things like window moves seem pretty slow. Also, pulling down a menu from a menubar seems pretty choppy and slow.

All this is in comparison to Windows XP on the same machine (my piii laptop).

Re:Sluggish how?

[higuita]

1. Launching a typical application (mozilla or openoffice) takes about 1-2 minutes, even when the application is entirely cached in RAM. On Windows, this takes

?! in my ancient 486, with just 64Mb mozilla takes about 2 minutes to start... how the hell does your 600Mhz with lots of mem takes soo long?!

check the DMA and like setting in your HD, with the hdparm
check how much memory is really being detected (with dmesg or free)
check how much memory are you using at that time, if you are using 500Mb of memory with other programas, of course this will be slow swapping the memory to the HD
are you using a accelerated drivers of just the vesa framebuffer support?

and finally, are you trying to compare in windows, both mozilla and openoffice with the quickstart option on and linux?
linux (at least for now) doesnt have any quickstart in both openoffice and mozilla
because its a multiuser OS, imagine all users pre-loading both mozilla and openoffice, the computer would be without memory in no time...
in windows its easier because its single user always
without the quickstart, loading times should be near in both OS

2. Resizing a window looks like complete shit, because the resizing drags behind my mouse movements by several seconds. On windows, this is completely instantaneous on far older hardware, even if I jerk the mouse back and forth as fast as I can.

sounds like you are using the vesa drive, that isnt acelerated... try using a decent driver
also, very old cards may not be fully acelerated in linux (as there where no true support for linux for the company at that time), so if its the case, you can try switching the card

also, resizing with "show windows rezise" option turn on makes things slower, because the apps and the X have to draw the resized windows all the time, and in more complex apps, (like a konqueror showing a PDF) this can be slow
try to turn off that option, for "border-wire only resize", it should be alot faster... or change to ligther apps

again, in my 486, with wire-border resize, i can resize without any slowdown at all...
i'm running fluxbox 0.1.14 by the way

3. Moving windows takes visible time.

again, you are using the vesa drive for sure
if not, try again turn on the backingstore in the X, so it can cache the apps look (it use more memory but you have lots of memory)
if all fails, try also the option above, but i dont think will make huge difference

4. Opening new windows takes several seconds. Again, completely instantaneous on windows years ago.

are you talking about what apps? KDE or gnome apps? this apps start, talk with central daemons, load configs, load fonts, load thenselfs and finally show up... yes, the latest versions of KDE and GNOME are slow in older computers, if you want to use then try to make then simpler and with as little thing possible ( that means that its less eye candy, but also the candy look of windows XP uses alot resources)

KDE and GNOME right now are desktop managers for recent computers, they can do all, but they also require a fast CPU and alot memory

try testing something like fluxbox/blackbox, WMaker, etc as a windows manager
try XFCE or ROX as a desktop manager
its a huge difference in computer resource use

also, is the HD using DMA?!
have you about 5000 fonts and use one different font in each apps?

i can tell you, i use a 486@133 overclocked to 160Mhz (should be about a P90), with 64Mb ram slackware 9.1, fluxbox and i dont thing the X is slow...
i use dillo as a browser, sylpheed as email, rxvt as a xterm, and several other light apps so i can see when the X is being slow or the app is slow
small options in the apps can do huge difference in performance

the only think that i usully see as slow that i can point to X is drag and drop, but i suspect that its more gtk and qt/kde fault

Yep.

[PotatoHead]

It does exactly what we want, only not on the native graphics display.

You still have to plan ahead and launch the app using an open vnc server. You can even strip the server down so that it just runs the app. So it is still a desktop, but running a single application. I do this from time to time.

The feature we want is the ability to identify and move an application running on a native X display system, to another one --the VNC one, for example, without planning ahead.

Re:Yep.

[jbert]

I believe it does do what you want. I think this is exactly what VNC was designed for (over in the Olivetti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HATT research labs in Cambridge (UK)). (Hi Tweest, if you're reading...hope RealVNC is going well.)

You're "planning ahead" becomes what you do by default.

*All* your apps are launched with their X 'DISPLAY' set to the VNC X server (a single server, not a per-app one). Then, whereever *you* are, you run a VNC client session to your VNC X Server and see your desktop.

Ta-da.

For bonus points, get some of their cool "active badge" technology so that "the system" knows where you are in the building and routes your desktop and phone extension to wherever you have happened to sit yourself down.

BRING IT ON

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Canada.

Re:BRING IT ON

[Squegie]

Native or did you switch, like John?

Useful, and eats its own dog food.

[waferhead]

Eats its own dog food.

I'm sure Solaris is the OS de jour at Sun.

I have to assume Windows is typical in Redmond.

I'm pretty sure anything other than Redhats products in Redhats building is...Lost.

If IBM wants to push Linux into the enterprise, this is a damn good start.

There are few enterprises bigger than IBM.
(There are very likely smaller countries than IBM...)

AIX

[Anonymous Coward]

Porting useful tools from the AIX environment should not be hard, but this will only be useful for the support staff as they are the only ones who have used it, but IBM has a large portion of it's users using gui based programs under AIX.

Thinkpads with Linux ?

[BESTouff]

Does that mean that we'll actually see thinkpads with linux preinstalled, and for less than their MS-taxed siblings ?

Re:Thinkpads with Linux ?

[digitalhermit]

Personally, I don't care if it's any cheaper than a Windows machine. I just want all the features on the laptop to work perfectly, including DVD playback, wireless ethernet, power management, video, sound and all the extra buttons.

Re:Thinkpads with Linux ?

[Junta]

All check, what's your point? On my A31p the only button not working is the 'ThinkPad' button, the rest present keysyms (except the volume, which works regardless of OS support). DVD playback works about as well as anywhere else (XvMC is the only thing looming that will give additional booost), wireless ethernet is a prism chipset, power management is both apm and acpi. Sound is intel_8x0.

Not a single hardware feature on this laptop fails under linux, and working on other Thinkpads, it holds true across the board in my experience.

Re:Thinkpads with Linux ?

[klic]

I run Linux on my Thinkpad T30. Most things work. It was non-zero effort to set up. If Linux came pre-installed, I could spend my time on other things.

Thinkpads will be Linux-at-IBM's point of maximum leverage. While lots of apps can be made to work in a web/java/distributed environment, many will have to be ported to work standalone with laptops.

I suspect, though, that full support for Thinkpads will not occur by 2005, and these will probably be exempted as "not desktop" by management for some time. As I understand it, the laptops are manufactured by asian third parties, and the choice of chipsets and components will be limited to what's on the market and functional and inexpensive. So we will continue to see Windows-optimized video and wifi and modem chips, and while we may see complete sets of drivers for these by the 2005 "deadline" they probably won't be open source.

But then, as a Linux-loving chip designer, maybe I can help change that ... :-)

Re:Thinkpads with Linux ?

[Anonymous Coward]

My 'Thinkpad' button works, it opens a new fresh xterm in my Linux :-)

Re:Thinkpads with Linux ?

[MikeBabcock]

Precisely my thoughts -- I don't buy the cheapest machines, I buy the ones that do what I want to do for a reasonable price. If its too cheap, it probably sucks (good rule of thumb in all industries).

I don't mind paying *more* for a machine that supports Linux in all its hardware devices, and that comes with Linux software to use all those devices.

ehh?

[Deternal]

You are surely not comparing collaboration software with an office suite? Compare Lotus Smartsuite and OOo if you want.

Compare Outlook/Exchange, Ximian/qmail and Lotus Notes/Domino - and surely Lotus Notes/Domino comes out on top on a number of areas just like the others come out on top in other areas.

They where saying they moved their app's from Lotus Notes to the web? You know what? That means they are using the webserving of Domino and using webinterfaces to talk to the notes databases on their servers. It doesn't mean they changed platform, nor that Lotus is going out of business anytime soon.

Excel

[Razzak]

Excel is quite possibly the most dominant application ever. Really.

Sure, I hate Windows. But if I needed to I can use it. I dislike Linux, but if I need to I can use it. I'm so/so on Mac OS X, but I use it every day. I use Excel every day, but I think I'd rather run Windows ME 24x7 than use any other spreadsheet program. There's alternatives to all the Adobe apps that are useable, alternative OS's, alternatives to Word, IE, Access, Powerpoint and all the others. There's no alternative to excel.

You can have my powerbook and excel when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

Re:Excel

[Trelane]

What keeps you locked into excel, especially considering the documented bugs that give you wrong answers?

Personally, I like OO's Calc and gnumeric.

Link to the commercial...

[HansF]

You will find the commercial in realplayer, quicktime and mpeg for linux format here.

Re:Link to the commercial...

[Dalcius]

Or if you prefer to save it instead of streaming:
prodigy90_med.mpg
(I just pulled this out of the "MPEG Player for Linux" streaming .mpeg file)

composting manager?

[spectrokid]

I heard of "hygienic assistants" before, is this a politically correct term for the guy collecting dead salad leaves?

ThinkPads

[ChunderDownunder]

In my experience in corporate Australia, ThinkPads are the most plentiful.

top-of-the range Dell Inpirons appeal to the hardcore coder needing a massive screen.

Personally, I think IBM would have a market among us geeks for PPC notebooks running Linux, provided they were price competitive wrt to their x86 offerings and Apple's.

[Hey, thinkpads offer 3-button pointing; not so with Apple *books!!]

The last IBM PPC 750(FX?) had pretty good (non-vector) performance and low power consumption.

Nevermind the smaller die G5s they've just released for the xserve, I'd be happy with a 750VX
(the rumored G3 + altivec running at 200mhz fsb).

On that note, Apple is rumored to be using that chip in the next-gen iBook when the 'mobile' G5 hits the powerbook.

Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Most comments focus on what this would mean for software on Linux, but what about hardware.

The other day there was an article about Intels and Microsofts cooperation on a new bios, probably with DRM, wich many feared would lock out other operating systems than windows from that architecture.

IBM migrating to Linux maybe won't change that, but isn't it a guarantee for the existance of affordable Linux platforms even after Longhorn.

Re:Hardware

[Squegie]

I don't think Intel would do that. The wintel alliance is nowhere near what it once was, if it's truly still there.

Intel has been leaning towards linux quite readily in recent years and definitely recognizes the value of supporting linux and oss. Intel also has competitors that recognize the same, and Intel knows this.

I doubt Microsoft will produce a key feature that only works on brand new hardware that no one has, and I doubt that Intel will allow itself to be forced into produce hardware that only works with one operating system.

If traditional buyers of MS products see they get almost (but not quite) all of that "key feature" to work on existing hardware, most will go that route. The ones that would want that final security of hardware DRM would purchase the hardware, but how big is that market? Is it big enough for motherboard manufacturers to switch from their current bios supplier to Intel so they can bundle drm with their motherboards, motherboards that will only work with one os?

No, I feel confident in using linux (or more likely these days, bsd) on new, retail-level hardware for years to come. I also think that for DRM to succeed, it has to work in a corporate environment, one that has things like Oracle, SAP, Unix, Linux, and BSD. Microsoft would be blind to think it can get corporations to convert from something they already have paid for that works reasonably well, seems reasonably secure, and handles a bigger load than what Microsoft is offering.

Back then it was not clear who the winner would be

[jotaeleemeese]

IBM's OS/2 lost because IBM trusted MS.

That is a mistake they are not going to commit again.

MS, by means of its dirty tactics, is alienating many IT companies that although may make business with them are always ready to grasp any oportunity to get out of their shadow.

To take the city without fighting is the best

[roomisigloomis]

Actually, I think that this is more an illustration of Sun Tzu's principle that taking the city without fighting is the best case. In this instance, IBM, by embracing open source and Linux while agreeing to sell hardware and software from competitors like HP, has re-emerged as the leader in complete enterprise IT solutions while taking the enemy's ammunition as its own. How is HP supposed to compete with a company that says "if the situation is right, we recommend HP products" to its customers. HP spend more on research and development while IBM refocuses its research and development to other less competitive places (like the PowerPC chip). In addition, HP advertising becomes IBM advertising. Finally, by using open source and standards-based software, it can also claim infinite interoperability. Brilliant strategy, if you ask me.

Open Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

From the memo:

You will receive two invitations, one from the Open Desktop Project Office and the other from the On Demand Workplace Framework team.

Guess it's a good thing that SCO's "Open Desktop" trademark was cancelled August 12, 1996 (you can check this yourself by searching at http://www.uspto.gov). I can just see SCOX trying to use this in court.

Re:My cold dead hands!

[SirDrinksAlot]

You apparently dont have the slightest clue about programming what so ever. You also dont have any clue about anything apparently either. Linux crashes too, chuckles.

leaked ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see internal memos leaked to the press before they actually get send.

I'd love to see this happen,
but the note looks far too much like a cheap mockup.
(The style just isn't right...)

If at least we'd get a native Lotus Notus client.

a.c.
ps:
Deliberatly not posted with my /. account,
for obvious reasons.

few good men left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go IBM!!

RTF: Microsoft propriety format

[edxwelch]

Yes, maybe there are RTF readers available for Linux, but RTF is still a Microsoft propriety format. I know there is a specification available, but it really only half-documents the specifications... just enough to fool people into thinking that it's an open specification.

games

[SQLz]

Maybe now we'll start seeing more good games as IBM employees join the ranks of Linux users. This is exactly how the gaming shift from the Mac to the IBM PC happened. Large companies started installing PCs for everyone at the office, people then bought what they used at work for home use. I predict that 2004 or 2005 will be the 'year of the linux gamer' as Linux systems equipped with Kernel 2.6 lay waste to the competition.

Sun already runs only on Solaris...

[maitas]

I believed that since 1995 or a little later there's no single os besides Solaris in Sun (except from some laptops that cames preloaded with Windows and doesn't run Solaris x86).

Mr. Gates

[Walrus99]

Did you notice that in the HTML script version the line "Collecting data is only the first step towards wisdom, But sharing data is the first step towards community" is attributed to a Mr. Gates? The actor is a black actor, obviously not Bill. Did Bill Gates actually say that line. Is Big Blue trying to interject some ironic humor?

Its great that IBM is backing Linux. It was Microsoft's alliance with IBM on the first PC's that got Microsoft off the ground. Now if IBM can come up with an easy to use Linux desktop for use beyond their own offices we could be seeing something.

Re:Mr. Gates

[the_consumer]

The Mr. Gates in question is Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

From the Trenches

[Associate]

This a little hard to stomach. Many of the people I work with don't even know which version of Windows they are running, most if not all Win2k. Hell, my manager had his machine disabled by the network admins because he never bothered to perform ANY of the required software updates to secure his machine. (He also likes gator.) Things like the ISSI Ibm uses makes it easy to get the software you need. And the EZUpdater makes it, uh, easier. The people I work with wouldn't know what to do with a machine running Linux on the desktop. Unless of course everything was point and click icons, ie like Windows. But from my limited experience with Linux, this is easily done. I hope some good for IBM and us all comes of this. (I also hope they buy my project back.)

".DOC" is a suite of formats, not a single format

[SgtChaireBourne]

Each version of MS-Word has a slightly different, slightly incompatible file format. Various formating and metadata does not always translate. So, despite the same 3-letter extension, it is not a single format. You already knew that because you probably know someone that bought the "latest version" just to be able read the new file format.

Lesson? It's part of the hamster wheel of useless upgrades. And it currently leads to lost business or government records due to changes in undocumented, proprietary formats. How many minutes / hours are you willing waste to attack a file in order to find out how to read it in order to find out if it is worth reading?

Templates and styles are the way to go regardless of which program you use and regardless of which format it chooses to write. OpenOffice.org is one of many which do that well.

Seriously, what functions do you use now in 2004 that where not available in 1994?

Erh, no I was advocating programming over

[Idou]

mindless routine for the "knowledge worker." But, yes. I would take a Perl program anyday over a 12 worksheet spreadsheet that has complex if statements and decision tables when it would only take 20 lines of Perl to complete the entire algorthim.

I see Perl's only drawback is its flexibility, which can make it sometimes a challenge for others to read. However, what other language did you have in mind? We are talking about replacing workers with very short scripts, here. As long as you keep things short, which Perl allows you to do, I don't see a problem. Especially if you are only using it as a database interface.

Unlikely, because we need to use MS Word now

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at IBM so I need to post anonymously.

I seriously doubt this will affect more than half the organization. Up until about a year ago or so, the offical word processor was Lotus WordPro, because IBM owns Lotus. Well, everyone who uses WordPro hates it, and its file import/export filters are terrible.

So the new official word processor is MS Word. Of course, there are still entire divisions that are using WordPro, because they still have thousands of documents written in WordPro, and they can't afford to buy the MS Word licenses for all their employees.

There was always the possibility of port WordPro to Linux, because IBM owned it. There's no way that MS Word is going to be ported to Linux. So the only way for an IBM employee to conform to both guidelines is to run VMWare.

Now, I know what you're going to say - why doesn't IBM just standardize on Open Office? Well, I don't know why. But I do know that IBM is a huge organizationg that frequently competes with itself, and just because some high-level executive has made some pronouncement, it doesn't mean it will come true.

TCPA?

[Schreckgestalt]

Wow, with such a userbase, a business userbase, isn't that going to stop the whole TCPA movement?

I mean, if IBM, the largest manufacturer of PC systems is switching to Linux, are Intel and AMD going to tell them "Sorry, IBM, you are our best customer, but you are going to have to switch to MS OS again?"...

Re:TCPA?

[crusher-1]

Well, maybe that's one of the motivations for this push. If TCPA is more about M$ keeping control of there market sector than it's officially designated use as a security method, then a mass switch to Linux on the desktop would surely put a crimp in the M$ focus and Redmonds grand design, of course which the official party line is that it's for security protocols.

One obvious thing this would do would be to break the dependency on M$ for support and hence a lucrative revenue source for M$. And likewise it takes M$' leverage points away. Kinda like the old mind over matter argument - IBM no longer minds M$ because MS doesn't matter anymore, at least to larger extent.

The other angle is a marketing statement. If one considers that Munich announced a systems wide switch to Linux, and now 19 German cities are making a concerted push to Linux as well. Add India, The Asian consortium (Japan, PRC, and Korea) developing their own, the U.S. Federal Court System switching to Linux, many large Wall Street firms switching to Linux, etc.., and IBM announcing the move to have their entire company using LOTD (Linux on the Desktop) and it sends a message to the rest of the enterprise and corporate sector that LOTD is going to happen in a very real way.

It also sends a message to the ISV/IHV/OEMs that a viable market in respects to supporting both programs, devices and device drivers is happening. Pair this with the host of developers in IBM that are going to focus on programs and support for LOTD at IBM and how that would translate to end-users and those that do business with IBM and one can see a substantial and potentially far reaching market play by Big Blue.

Unlike OS/2, where in IBM offered yet another proprietary product, one that brought forth many of the concerns we see people expressing in relation to M$ - that being lock ins, being relegated to the whims of a big business and the fact that IBM doesn't have to push Linux development solely by themselves and instead of trying to create a wave for vendors and customers to ride on. IBM only needs to ride the wave called Linux and in doing so lends credibility to its development and substancially creates a aire of support that is both seperate from IBM and at the same time IBM is perhaps the biggest player in this arena.

Look at the last six months, despite the SCO debacle, and we see Novell snatch up Ximian, then SUSE and all the while IBM is quitely sitting in the background while pulling a few choice strings. If we also consider Apple moving to the BSD based OS X and it's recent inclusion of XF86Free rendering base and we see the potential for more cross porting between Mac and Linux.

Step back and look at it from a bit of distance and we see, either by design or by happen stance, a concerted push away from Redmond in a manner that essentially, at least to some extent, negates M$' market leverage. Like I said - Mind over matter. I think the goal is to make M$ not matter, and a fair amount of people won't mind that in the least.

Rhetorical question

[lysium]

If IBM wants to take GNUStep and make it sexy, more power to them, but in the meantime, KDE will remain the coolest, most gorgeous linux desktop environment available.

Do you choose a President on the handsomeness of his haircut, or the whiteness of his teeth? An internal IBM desktop would be designed for getting work done, and not looking good. That is why there should never be One True Linux Desktop.

==========

Re:Rhetorical question

[ckaminski]

Absolutely. If my President looks like a slob, I won't vote for him, because it shows his lack of attention to detail.

Re:Rhetorical question

[Feztaa]

For the most part, I don't think the Presidents and GUIs are very comparable.

I might vote for a fat ugly slob, if his platform worked for me. Guess what -- I don't have to look at him while he does his job! My GUI, however, sits in front of me at all times. Getting work done is only half of it's job. The other half is to look good so that I'll actually want to use it.

I would say GUIs are more like girlfriends... if you found one that cooks and cleans for you, but looked like Medusa -- would you still make out with her? Personally, I wouldn't.

Re: your .sig...

[cmowire]

Right, except that this is my work laptop and the product I work on is built for Windows.

Re:Linux on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha.. you fell for it. This guy is obviously trolling. Statements like 'Requires 77% fewer steps' which are totally meaningless, using CAPS, and finally licensing it under the GPL. ..either that, or he's a complete retard

Q: writing Word plugin for OpenOffice XML format

[MarkWatson]

I am a OSX/Linux/Java user, so this might be a stupid question:

How difficult would it be to write Word macros or some other type of easily installable plugin that would make it easy and transparent for Word users to use OpenOffice XML formats instead of the frequently moving target of Word document formats?

For many Knowledge Management applications, it would be a huge win have documents stored in a standard XML format. This could also help prevent Word lockin. If such a set of macros or plugin came from IBM, most businesses would (I think) find them acceptable.

-Mark

Nazi Germany.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM and the Holocaust.

Porting the Application Universe

[klic]

Many of those 300K IBM employees are sales and support staff at remote offices, working zillions of odd little apps that help them do their unique jobs. Many are manufacturing. Think about the amazing diversity of desktops a place like IBM must have.

The really awesome aspect of this move is it goes way beyond Mozilla and Open Office(?). This is a move to Linux support for Milling Machine Master and Band Practice Pro and Golf Buddy 2004, since there are probably people at IBM that use such things full time. Windows is not just an OS, it is a universe of associated third-party applications, and engulfing that whole universe will mean that everything gets ported, or that Wine gets a LOT more attention.

The announcement was made for its market and psychological impact, but if it is really serious it will imply enormous efforts devoted to Wine and to porting tools for third-party software vendors. That may be the only way to remain compatable with all those thousands of third-party applications, and still meet the 2005 goal.

This will get very interesting, because IBM probably has contractual access to a lot of source code for Windows. If the SCO stink is "interesting", imagine the legal ruckus that Microsoft is going to make when all the porting tools and Wine improvements start showing up!

what about other christian 'crusades'

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am no expert about the muslim conquest of Europe.. I most certainly am one of the Portuguese conquest of "The Coast of Malabar" i.e the west coast of India.. where you either converted or died..

so also the spanish + Portuguese slaughter and forced conversion of the Incas and other tribes in present day South America, while his most Holiness in Rome looked on in encouragement..

and I am a catholic..

Re:what about other christian 'crusades'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and we can either self-flagellate or we can look at the amount of good Christianity has done.

I believe the latter far outweighs the former, unless of course you are propagandizing.

from mud to mud

[mr.Spike (edd sonic)]

Well, IBM is who pulled microsoft out of mud and out of being completely nothing. ibm-dos, os/2 is what microsoft based their crappy ms-dos and windows over. As well, IBM platform became microsoft home and world of their dominance. And file formats they proprietarized first was most of IBM (f.ex. BMP and others).

Seems that the time, for putting microsoft back to where they came form, has come. I hope IBM will do it's best on this mission.

important is avoiding to use proprietary, closed file and streaming formats . sure, never ever using proprietary&closed libraries and modules, too.
You know all the companies suffering (and only suffering) from using proprietary formats. Even the one i am working in. Everywhere around is stinking IIS exchange, doc and xls stuff.


May the power (of OSS) be with You!

the blah blah ......

[big-giant-head]

the enemy of my enemy is usually the one that will kick my a** once our common enemy is gone.

Fortuantely it will take a while for M$ to go away so we have 20 years or so before IBM and Community square off against each other, ala US vs USSR once the Nazi's fell.

This is the Turn of the Tide

[Jerk City Troll]

Thank you IBM for tackling a lot of the barriers that currently prohibit Linux on the desktop. There is going to be some serious progress as IBM universally eats its own dog food.

On top of that, this will undue a lot of the damage rendered by SCO in the past few months. If anyone has any doubts about using Linux due to SCO's nonsense, it should be assuaged. "Big Blue isn't worried, we shouldn't be either."

Advanced swede's

[big-giant-head]

After buy my POS volvo I'd would'nt be bragging about how advanced the swede's are. It isn't even as good as Honda's were 10 years ago. It's also about as ergonomic as a brick.

... Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you're taking this a bit too seriously.

On the other hand, you should contact the producers from Fear Factor. They might give you the opportunity to choose and let us all watch!

No, actually I am a "failed economist"

[Idou]

Or, at least I never ended up with a specific "economics degree required" job, though my current job as an operations analyst does allow me to use some of the theories. My company paid for me to become a CPA so that I could help them move towards GAAP (they are a foreign company). GAAP protects American accountants from the kind of outsourcing that programmers face because it is specific to the U.S., and it is far more expensive and inconvenient to become an American CPA than it is to learn some programming language.

The irony is that there are a lot of tasks that accountants use raw copy and pasting to perform every month (at least it appears the ones at my company do) that could be much better handled with some form of programming. The accounting and IS departments usually do not get along too well at my company (they just see things very differently . . .), and I bet that is the same at other companies. I have tried to learn as much programming on my own in order to save time on trying to analyze data that has been pissed away in inconsistent excel files.

Anyway, you are either going to have outsourcing or you will see investors invest in companies located where labor is cheaper. Either way, you will find it just as difficult to get a job with simply "programmer" on your resume. There are many, many companies out there that need programmers, but they are too behind times to understand that what they need is customization of software. If you have some other skill that can get you into the door, that opens the way to create some very useful applications that will make you more valuable than those chasing numbers around on an excel sheet or those cheap foreign programmers that will need detailed design documentation to be able to contribute anything useful.

Correction: X11 is a problem

[Jon_E]

Agreed X11 is a necessary component, but the dependence on X11 is a problem (in the same way that the dependence on sendmail was/is a problem) - the APIs and libraries are hideous to deal with and carry *way* too much legacy from the 70s and 80s.

There's many parts of *nix that need to be rewritten in a fresh way, and I applaud XFree86 for their effort in bridging the gap and carrying the torch to the masses, but at some point we need to let go and latch onto something better. Windows *has* a market (imho) because of the history of X11.

And to simply nitpick on another issue - (and yes i know Wittgenstein's view that language is use) - but "linux" is just the kernel, potatohead dude, and X11 is not part of that kernel. OSS is much broader and bigger than a kernel and is the basis for a number of varied and disorganized distributions. It's been a great science project and learning tool for a while with some incredibly valuable tools - but let's grow up a little and look to harden more things around here, before we go spouting on about how wonderful X11 is. There's some real issues with X11 that we need to address with alternative base windowing systems. Great - we've got a start with the kernel - lets move on to the next set of components that need some rework .. how about programming languages (java is a great start, quick scripting tools in perl and python .. great!), filesystems (ok some decent work continuing here xfs from SGI looks good to help things along), windowing systems (well - we've got a lot of things sitting on top of X, but nothing really to redo it ..) It's going to require dedicated jobs and money and hence there will be dedicated interests .. there's no 2 ways about it.

Couple things . . .

[Idou]

One, you probably have never worked for a company that has annual sales in the billions but does not use a rdbs. Instead, they use some kind of flat file system that requires manual entry of excel files sent from other branches. The financials are done in an Excel Spreadsheet and forecasts are sent out as spread sheaets.

You probably also never have had to create a Forecast database based on 60 different excel files that were sent every month from the main office that have different column order, names (many times mispelled), worksheet names (yes, that is important data too), and is more or less completely inconsistent. For this I have used the Perl Spreadsheet::Parse module which has been very, very helpful and allowed me to create a simple system to update things by simply having someone move a new excel file to a folder and run the script.

Excel is many things, but it is not a database, but since the business culture has for some reason decided that it is the only tool anyone should be required to learn, it ends up being misused. If you don't know how to program, how will you ever be able to know whether this is a task that should be done in Excel or a task that should be down in a programming language? Obviously my company doesn't know the difference and so Excel has been a very destructive influence on our data.

Yes, tools are tools, but some tools are designed to lock-in data and give the impression that they can do anything.

I mean, have you ever watched a guy create a segmented P and L by filtering an excel sheet, copying the filtered data to another sheet, changing the filter, copying the data for another sheet, etc . . . for over 2 hours? How can that be compared to learning some SQL and getting a dump from a database every month? How would you feel about our species if you knew that that was possible yet people still did it the inefficient way because "programming" is considered too difficult to be required from a "knowledge worker."

Programmer lock-in is far less costly than "knowledge worker" lock-in because the programmer can do the work of an entire department of mouse clicking number dragging "knowledge workers." Plus, regardless of how difficult and obscure the code is, it is still better documentation than nothing.

However, maybe you must first work a company like mine before you start seeing things this way. . . (i.e. Excel is great for one time analysis or routine tasks that NEVER change, but I think many people waste too much time with it simply because they associate GUI with "easier").

Absolutely...

[FatSean]

The concept of intolerance towards other religions (specificaly Christianity and Judaism (sp) ) is all over the Koran. In fact I have been shown 'excerpts' that make destruction of followers of these religions acceptable. I mean, even the asshole xtians don't have clauses in their holy writings telling them to kill people of other religions!

So the muslim faith is no better...and infact possibly worse for social order, than the Bible-based beliefs.

Hahahah...you're funny...

[FatSean]

Usable...what about all those half-baked and forgotten Open Source projects? Surely you don't consider those abortions to be equivilant to the software released for Windows? There are very few open source windows projects...most windows software is released when it's 'done'.

.LWP?

[FatSean]

Ok sorry...bad joke...

Re:Football...

[rifter]

is not violent! Ohh, now I get it you mean the sport that North Americans call football, that you play with your hands.... :-)

Actually both can be pretty violent. How many people get killed at an "American Football" match? But they get killed all the time at Euro football. And there is that bit about kicking each other. I mean yes, it is easy to do it by accident trying for the ball, but still. I had understood that fights break out between the football teams quite often as well.

I am sorry, but X11 is just fine, thank you

[PotatoHead]

No growing up required. X11 is an important feature in that it keeps the whole of Linux multi-user at all levels. Multi-user computing may not be needed for your average joe, but it can easily be leveraged by most anybody else to their advantage. Multi-user computing plays hard in the enterprise space and anyone that knows anything about computing knows it. Giving that up means accepting Microsoft is right about display technology and we simply must do it cheaper and that's bullshit.

Microsoft has a market because they took shortcuts, litigated, licensed, and bought out most of the tech that stood in their way. In the early 90's I was running SGI workstations that used the X window system and frankly, they spanked any win32 running machine of the day. In terms of display capability they still punch well above their weight today.

We have work to do on X, but removing it is not the answer --refining it as SGI did is.

Windows has the market they do because they were clearly disruptive at the time. A low price point combined with court proven unethical, illegal business practices allowed them to build it. Commercial UNIX, at the time, was expensive and fragmented and weak because of it; thus, we end up with a market full of short-cut designed by marketing software that continues to color many peoples idea of computing to this day.

The fact that there are more people running single-user computers only reflects the result of business savvy and questionable ethics, not the merits of the technology itself.

There is no way a single user display sub-system is going to be able to compete with the multi-user goodness that is X. I was on that path. Got my Microsoft cert and all of that. Blazing the trail with NT. Feeling the power and having a good time, until one day....

Got assigned a job that involved some rendering. Got cocky, and had a failure that pushed the project past a deadline. Was on SGI machines at the time because of the software in use.

Well, lets just say I did not miss that deadline. Being in a multi-user environment meant that I could make use of damn near every machine in the place from my desk. I always knew this, but did not really apply it until this came up. Using X11 meant that I could install software, monitor and start renders, composite and encode all on different machines in different locations at the same time. --I spent about 14 hours doing exactly that. Printed the project to video tape about 15 minutes before the client picked it up.

That one day changed a lot of things because I finally understood what true multi-user computing is about. If I had been running win32 at the time, I would have not made it. Would have spent too much time messing around with various machines in different locations. Single user, multi-tasking OSes do not allow their users to really take advantage of their networked environment. They do not scale well because of this. Failure to scale costs money and time, but does keep a large number of admins employed these days. Oh well...

You know today, I support multi-user server based complex applications running over X. Installation of these applications is complex as is administration. Putting that application onto one compute server with shared data exported via SAMBA makes for a tight clean environment that requires very little support. What support it does require can be done from anywhere because of X. Some of the folks doing this have went the PC win32 route. Every last one of them have seen their administrative costs rise as the number of tasks that have to be done while physically at the machine rises.

Ever see a broken win32 server? We all have. What do we see? A bunch of admins standing around while one of them works the machine. Ever see the same in a multi-user environment? Everybody can be doing something as long as the network is running, plus there are fewer admins to boot because they don't spend their time walking around!

Almost the entire body of

ASSES the intrest???

[nutznboltz]

...to asses the impact of these On Demand initiatives.

Is this thing real? That's a pretty lame typo.

Re:My cold dead hands!

[1lus10n]

not has much has windows. chuckles ...... clueless bill gates fanboy.

Interesting

[PotatoHead]

I am running Mandrake 8.2 at the moment on a P3/500 or so. Graphics subsystem is Matrox G400.

For me, application launch is slower than most intergrated win32 applications are. Only a bit slower than non-intergrated ones. My guess is this is a combination of non optimal code combined with the user space issues. (Takes time to init stuff in user space that might be done already in a win32 environment...)

2d buttons respond in a few milliseconds, so we clearly differ there. Window moves can be sluggish when they are moved a lot, so perhaps we agree on this point, though I have always run my computers with opaque move off. (Turned them on for this little comparison) Menus vary. The KDE menu is quite snappy. Mozilla on the other hand seems to be a bit slower. Maya works much as it does on win32. There is room for agreement here also.

I run Maya on this machine and it performs nicely within the limits of the matrox card. Quake3 sees 60Fps on average, with low latency between mouse move and screen update.

XP is well tuned in these areas, no doubt, but does it matter? X is improving all the time. Three years ago, things were worse overall. Today they are quite useable.

I still maintain X is not the problem however. It is improving every day with the current state productive and useable. X on an SGI machine is as snappy as you can ask for (even on the really old 30Mhz machines which is scary), so clearly the protocol and core design are not at fault, only implementation.

Would I give up all the good features for a bit crisper window experience? Not a chance....

These seem like awful small nits to pick given the advantages.

Re:Interesting

[rnd()]

Interesting. For some reason Mandrake 8.2 insists on crashing during install on my laptop, so I resorted to RH9. I used to run Mandrake, and I think the i586 optimization made a significant performance improvement overall and made the whole OS feel faster.

How difficult do you think it would be to use the RH9 Source RPMs for X and compile them with more optimizations (such as PIII)?

Looks like we run similar hardware

[PotatoHead]

what graphics system are you running?

Your Moz and OOO times are insane! OOO on my machine (P3/500 385Mb Ram, browsers and terms open, Mandrake 8.2) takes about 31Sec cold, 9 Sec cached... WTF !?! There is a problem on your end somewhere. Too many things running, or something.

I find it damn hard to believe your claim of less then a second for OOO on the older machine. Comparing Word are we? Maybe the fact that most of what Word needs is already running helps out just a bit.

When you say "People want..." don't you really mean you want? (Not that it's a bad want or anything, but I mean to be clear.) Companies who take advantage of network transparancy are going to save money. The users are going to deal. Since enterprise systems are where the money is, network transparancy is important.

Remember an SGI machine can do these things well and they run X. This means we can also, we just need to keep working hard at it. (Which was my first point to begin with; namely, not killing off the power now just to make a few happy.)

I was pretty surprised when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Open your browser and type "linux" for the url.

You'll need to migrate to XDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Which I understand IBM intends to port to Linux.

Compiling X

[PotatoHead]

is not a bad thing to try. You might give 9.2 a shot now that it is out with updates. I have a copy running on this box, just have not moved all my user data over yet. (Too busy)

Mandrake does make a difference on this machine, though I never took the time to note the X differences. (Last RH I tried was 7 something and it was not for me on the desktop yet.)

I really like Mandrake. 8.2 was a very good release. 9.2 is close, but with newer software. With a coupla downloads from PLF, DVD support (play, rip, burn) is working with DVD Shrink running under wine.

Funny you did not note fonts as one of the X shortcomings. For me, this has been a biggie. All fixed in Mandrake 9.2. The whole desktop just looks good. (Finally)

I'll bet if you get all the sources loaded, the X compile will not be too bad. If it works, let me know what you see.

How does this work when working

[PotatoHead]

on the native display system?

Do you run VNC there too? The case we were talking about happens when you are working on the local display and have to move...

Application needs to move also, but cannot unless you have done something in advance (xmove, VNC...).

In a corporate situation I can see this working nicely with application servers, but what about the home machine, or machines in different locations/networks?

I am not sure how VNC works in this case. Hints? ???

Re:How does this work when working

[jbert]

Yes. Your "local display system" just happens to be "the display I am near at the moment".

So you:

- run an Xvnc all the time;
- have your DISPLAY set to that X server (Xvnc)
- connect to that X server from wherever you can run a VNC client (your local display; a thin X client; someone else's X server; that Windows box you are walking past; your PDA?; an internet cafe if you are bold enough with your firewall rules (or just crazy))

Re:My cold dead hands!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Bill Gates fan boy because he doesn't want his applications written from scratch or ported introducing new and more bugs? I would also think it would be impossible for them to go to Linux on the help desks because most of the applications aren't even made or owned by IBM.
You're the reason the Linux community is getting a bad rap. Majority of Windows users are happy to just be working along when there's no reason to change anything. It makes no sense to switch to Linux when it will cost more to get all the applications ported that the users are going to need to use.
You can't just create open source projects for all of them and expect them to be done on time. Also, most of the applications work with sensitive information and it could be a security risk allowing these tools to be developed in an open source environment.

Re:This is about dog food -Resale and marketing

[LINM]

I think your point might be valid if the company were a Procter & Gamble. However, in the case of IBM there are significant external benefits that the company would receive from such a move.

Initiating and successfully implementing this shift would show that a move to the Linux desktop is feasible. It would furthermore position IBM as one of the leaders in Linux on the dekstop, a potentially massive market. Furthermore, with a lot of the heavy lifting complete, IBM could market "off the shelf" solutions to its customers complete with proven technology and adoption plans.

I think that this move signals more than just a gain for Linux, it identifies the timing of Linux's ascendancy on the desktop.

Actually...

[FatSean]

IBM has a very powerful mail filtering system upstream of any user interaction. From what I've heard those worms had a very small impact. I daily interact with about 20-30 people and none of them has ever been hit.

Re: your .sig...

[MsGeek]

Like I said, you can run the Knoppix disk from your CD-ROM drive and it will not touch your Windows install except to add a file called knoppix.swp to your root directory. The file is easily trashable from Windows.

Repeat after me: Knoppix will not fuxor your Windows install. It is safe to try Linux using Knoppix.

OT: Your Journal

[Pan T. Hose]

You have disabled comments in your journal so I post it here, willing to take the risk of being moderated as off topic. That having been said, we will miss you here, MsGeek...

Re:OT: Your Journal

[MsGeek]

OK, I'm not leaving Slashdot. I can't leave, I'm addicted.

All I am saying in my journal is that I'm not going to update that anymore...that I will be blogging exclusively on my Blogspot space, which you can reach through the URL under my name.

Hope that explains things...

Michelle aka Ms. Geek

WWJR?

[dolson]

WWJR?

Linux. ;)

Format, Access, XML

[fm6]

You can make a Word document read-only. And you can make a PDF editable. Which I guess is a pretty tiny nit to pick, since nobody ever does.

People pass around Word documents because its what they know how to do. I know people who put even very short memos in Word files, then attach them to email to distribute them!

We've been talking about the paperless office for a couple of decades now, but we're actually further away from it than we've ever been -- PCs seem to create new kinds of paperwork. If we're ever going to change that, we need to get away from word processor formats (Word, FrameMaker, etc.) and page description languages (PDF, PostScript TeX) that simply reproduce the physical page on a computer screen. That means training people to change their way of thinking and stop thinking purely in terms of how a document looks. It's more imporant how a document is structured. And yeah, I'm talking the XML Party Line.

Oddly enough, Microsoft seems to be moving precisely to this model -- all the Office 2003 apps emphasize using XML to share information instead of the traditional RTF. When I went to the Office 2003 launch D&S show, one of the demos had a user writing a purchase order in MS Word. But the document wasn't DOC or RTF or even HTML -- it was an XML purchase order document type, defined in an XML Schema. Violations of the schema were flagged with those little squiggles, like for grammar and spelling errors.

This is cool because it allows people to migrate to XML document types without changing their tool set. Of course, you can't just sit down and create a random XML document -- an XML expert has to have designed the workflow, programmed the business logic, and defined the document types.

I have to wonder if Microsoft sees the full implications of this approach. I rather doubt it. Because eliminating the messiness of Microsoft proprietary formats also eliminates the need to standardize on Microsoft tools. Given a well-designed schema, that PO could have been written in any XML editor.

I especially don't think that Redmond has considered that schemas can describe ordinary word processor files too, provided only that the format is well-structured and well-documented. So if you were to just tell all your Word users to use a schema that defines the XML document type used by a competing product, then there's no longer any format-gap between the two products.

If these things happen, Microsoft's could blunder away from OS dominance in much the same way they blundered into it!

Re:As far as IBM is concerned.

[quax]

Unfortunately your links are not working for me. Every one gave me a server error message. That is why I can only respond to the incidents that I recognize best:

The night club in Berlin was picked because it was heavily frequented by GIs. I was in Germany at the time and it was very clear from the beginning that this terror act was aimed at the USA and not at Germany. The Red Army Fraction terror had German politicians much more worried at the time.

France has an ugly colonial past in Algeria that it never quite came clear with and therefore has been for much longer a favorite target of hate of the Arab world than the USA.

Regarding your views of Arab people I can only urge you again to read the Iraqi blogs. There is no such thing as your typical Arab just as there is no such thing as your typical American Joe.

And yes, I can point you to smoother transfers of power in the world. For instances, all Eastern European countries after the Soviets stopped backing the communist regimes come to mind (this does not include Romania that did not have any Soviet presence). If you want an example of a smoother power transition that involved military force Bosnia makes a good candidate.

Some of the easily avoidable mistakes that have been made in Iraq:

- Only securing the ministry of oil and allowing the other ministries to be looted.
- Dissolving the Iraqi army over-night and making thousands unemployed as a result.
- Making it a crime to trade with fuel.

The list goes on. I don't think malice has been a factor in any of these mistakes. Ignorance seems to be a much more likely cause. Read the Iraqis blogs they will give your more details.

Bottom-line is: The US administration has to live up to the challenge of transforming Iraq into a democracy. Anything less will be utter failure. Let's hope that they at least can learn from their mistakes.

If the US fails in Iraq it will only compound Arab hatred towards the US. This hatred does matter because as long as the underlying political problems are not addressed Osama et. al. will always find recruits.

I think you seriously underestimate the common sense of the Arab street. Pointing out that you can buy the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Arab countries is like pointing out that you can purchase Hitler's "Mein Kampf" at Amazon. What is that supposed to prove? On the other hand there is evidence that real action does count, after all for the longest time there have been no terror acts against Israel while Rabin and Arafat were brokering for a real peace.

There is no other way but real action that demonstrates that the USA is not a foe to Arabs or Islam. It's the hard way, but there is no quick fix and there is no alternative.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned.

[FallLine]

All of those links work, you simply need to remove the white space from the links (slashdot breaks up any continous lines)

I never said all arabs are the same [I have some arab friends] I was simply answering your assertion, based on a sample composed of the 9-11 terrorists, that there is some widespread hate of the United States in the arab world. It is a fact though, that, the Protocols are widely distributed, widely quoted, and widely believed throughout much of the Arab world. They have even been quoted on their national radio shows and what not. Comparing it to AMAZON selling the Mein Kampf, which sells many thousands of different books, is absurd. The Protocols are:

a) much more popular relatively speaking (being one of the few or the only books carried in many of these markets)

b) A proven forgery (they are supposed to be the actual plans of the Jews)

c) Not a document of direct historical relevance so it's generally NOT studied by educated people (unlike the Mein Kampf in the US)

d) Quoted repeatedly by various Arab leaders and media figures.

Background on the Protocols in the Arab World

Furthermore, the point is that, regardless of real action or inaction (on the part of the Jews in this case), it only takes a handful of people to believe it and commit violent terrorist acts. Do you really believe, for instance, that there is any reasonable policy that the US Government could have enacted to have stopped Timothy McVeigh from blowing up the Federal building in OKC? Terrorist acts are not a priori evidence of bad policy or lack of good policy. There are crazy people in this world and most of them don't have any justification for their acts.

Germany, just like the US, has faced and will continue to face terrorism, particularly Arab terrorism, no matter how much you deny it and no matter what policies of capitulation it follows. Although policy can play some role in pro-actively preventing some terrorism, it will continue no matter what. Resting your beliefs on what happened in Israel is bad comparison because the elapsement of time was short and because Israel pursues policies that have direct and very substantial impact on the Palestianians (thus they have REGULAR politically directed bombings) that they can potentialy and realistically change.