IBM Puts $100M Behind Linux Push

IainMH writes "Over at the BBC, there is a report that despite the slow build up, IBM is spending $100m (£52m) over the next three years beefing up its commitment to Linux software. It continues: 'The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.'" Commentary and coverage also available on TechNewsWorld and ZDNet.

Comments

They need cash ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to run linux!??!

Say wah!?!?!?

Re:They need cash ...

[InfiniteWisdom]

To pay the $699 fee... duh

Why so little.

[FreeLinux]

For a company that made $2 billion off of Linux in the first year, it would seem that more spending would be appropriate.

How about $250,000,000 per year?

Re:Why so little.

[PornMaster]

No, they made $2 billion using and pushing Linux and their products which either run Linux or run on top of it.

You make it sound like they're freeloading by pressing copies of Debian and selling them.

They may have had $2 billion in Linux-related revenues, but the cost of making those $2 billion in sales was significant in terms of engineering, training consultants, sales, cannibalizing other resources which were going elsewhere, etc.

How much did they sell in Windows-related purchases in that time?

Re:Why so little.

[ultrabot]

For a company that made $2 billion off of Linux in the first year, it would seem that more spending would be appropriate.

Companies don't care how much spending would be "appropriate". They are going with spending that they think is going to be profitable, just the way it should be.

Re:Why so little.

[CoderBob]

Shouldn't you be happy that they're doing anything at all, rather than saying its not enough? I mean, if XYZ Corp pays its developers 5k to develop an awesome open source app, even though it has 25k free in the budget that it could have spent, and they made 500k on support, does it really matter? Are you going to give them grief too?

That they're trying to contribute at all should be seen as a Good Thing(tm). Yeah, maybe the could have spent more, but we're better off that they're allocating anything, no matter what the amount, than we would be if they didn't spend any money...

Re:Why so little.

[superpulpsicle]

They should care more about AIX. Comparing hands-on to linux, solaris, hpux, irix.... I'd have to say AIX is superior in almost everyway. But it is the most unmarketed product coming out of IBM?!

Re:Why so little.

[Phisbut]

I don't really care how much they spend on Linux, but it'd be nice if the spent in on what actually matters, which is educating the masses.

How about having an ad campaign on TV telling people that there *is* an alternative to Microsoft, and tell them what Linux is. Linux is underperforming because people don't know it's out there. But with ads aimed at the general public, next time Aunt Tillie complains because her computer keeps crashing, you can tell her "Remember that cool ad on TV, I can get you that Linux thing for free".

A BIG ally like IBM...

[TrollBridge]

Might be just what it takes to get a large chunk of hardware manufacturers and software vendors to start offering Linux-friendly products.

Sure, it might not start out as Linux-friendly games and gaming hardware, but this could be a very good start.

I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[HEXAN]

"I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back."

Yea, that seems very realistic. A giant company increasing spending because of a moral committment.

Can I score some of what you are high on?

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[ArsonSmith]

I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.


Umm, they are putting 100M into linux software? I think they are expecting "the getting something back" part of the deal.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[PornMaster]

For a bunch of principled Linux fanbois, you're really offputting because you don't even know how much IBM already gives back to the community. You just want to rail on about how information wants to be free, The Man is keeping everything down, etc. Hey, wake up. Linux is in the enterprise. Linux is making people money, and people are contributing back into Linux. The money people are making is largely coming from services provided, which is the model that the FOSS people want... free software, open source, if you want to make money from it, provide services... so IBM does that... but you need to be cynical little pricks about any corporation which is making money.

Pitiful and sickening.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[DoctorMO]

I kind of like IBM making money out of Linux, it means they have a stake in what happens to it and will more than likly contribute to it's growth and development. since Linux will remain open source it's really both of us that benifit, the company makes money and Linux gets some of the holes filled in with great wads of cash.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Donny Smith]

> I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

They won't make money (or recover those $100 m) out of vacuum - most likely you'll pay an extra X bucks for something from IBM along the way.

Talk about free lunch....

Look at their share price, for Christ's - do they look like some poor bastards who give everything away and survive on bare essentials? I don't think so.

Do you think their CEO said "Let's burn $100m and we'll get some great feedback on Slashdot?". Or "Let's spend $100m and make $300m!" is more likely?

A practical person would say "I hope they spend all that money on porting everything they can to GNU Linux and then I'll buy it pre-installed from DELL" (as DELL didn't spend those $100m their cost and price will more likey be lower than IBM's).

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[nine-times]

I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

I think you're missing the point. They don't need to have a "moral compass" directing them to give something back. IBM and Novell are both betting their business plans on the success of Linux, so the desire to make their business succeed and the desire to profit will direct them to use their time/money/resources to make Linux a success.

Or, more properly speaking, we should not be using the future tense. IBM and Novell are making money with Linux, and they have been "giving back". The good news is not "IBM is being nice and making a large charitable contribution towards Linux development". The story here is, "IBM views Linux as a necessary component for their success, and they are [currently] putting a lot of resources into helping Linux grow."

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Ingolfke]

The parent post is absolutely correct. IBM is giving back now by investing in Linux. The other, less obvious, contribution is that by actually recognizing the market for Linux and investing in it, IBM is expanding that market, which is expanding the total # of individuals who use and can in turn contribute back to Linux and it's related apps.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Trigun]

Give them the razor, sell them the blades comes to mind (and is a good source for a pun). If IBM kicks its fabs into full production, starts putting their power chips into millions of devices, and really nails the world on the whole 'digital convergence' crap, Microsoft's $2000 Tivo will be nothing.

How far could you push a generic box? Linux is a router, is a tivo, is a phone system, is a PC, is a whatever you dream up. Sell a platform for it, do what Dodge did with the K-car, and sit back and count the cash.

Maybe that's why they teamed up with Sony for the PS3? /random speculation

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Anonymous Coward]

For a bunch of principled Linux fanbois, you're really offputting because you don't even know how much IBM already gives back to the community. You just want to rail on about how information wants to be free, The Man is keeping everything down, etc. Hey, wake up. Linux is in the enterprise. Linux is making people money, and people are contributing back into Linux. The money people are making is largely coming from services provided, which is the model that the FOSS people want... free software, open source, if you want to make money from it, provide services... so IBM does that... but you need to be cynical little pricks about any corporation which is making money.

Well, you weren't very nice about it...but I'll have to admit that you were right. Maybe you should have said cynical, condescending, self-important, pompous little pricks.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Anonymous Coward]

...GNU Linux and then I'll buy it pre-installed from DELL...

Shouldn't that be Dell/Asustek or perhaps Dell/Intel?

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[4of12]

Look at their share price, for Christ's - do they look like some poor bastards who give everything away and survive on bare essentials?

One word: Services.

Linux becoming successful will mean that software services will be open to any and all comers, with no particular company gaining an advantage due to in-house knowledge of proprietary trade secrets, etc.

The advantage then goes to the company that has built trust with its clients, has a deep broad bench of intelligent staff as talent. Example: IBM.

Business services are even one of the few genuine brightspots for Microsoft itself, IIRC. Their new ventures tend to be money blackholes (Xbox) and the old cash cows like (OS, Office) won't last forever.

With all its experience in UNIX, I'm amazed that Sun hasn't clued into this idea yet and still steadfastly refuses to give up a pipe dream of displacing MS as the king of the software hill (let's put Java in place of Windows and .NET) (the RISC hardware manufacturing business being shown to be on the decline.)

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[sv0f]

I always wondered how it would sound if David Mamet and Brice Sterling wrote some collaborative non-fiction. Now I know.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Trigun]

Like the rantings of a madman. I get that all the time.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[sntl]

There seems to be a lot of speculation out there as to what profitable motivations IBM might have regarding Linux. Here's a conspiracy theory for the masses:

Considering their involvement with the new "Cell" chip, it seems like IBM's in the market for an operating system that's not tied to the x86 architecture. Even if Cell proved to be "better" than the x86 line, they'd have to lure consumers/developers away from their dependence and long standing reliance on Intel's architecture. Of course, all pre-existing compiled software would be useless on Cell. However, it just so happens that open-source software and specifically Linux are much better at jumping platforms than say...Windows.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Anonymous Coward]

> since Linux will remain open source it's really both of us that benifit, the company makes money and Linux gets some of the holes filled in with great wads of cash.

Wads of cash? $100 million for 3 years is pretty much $33.3 million per year compared to the billions they're taking in annually. IBM found the perfect Bait, the GPL, and they're playing a better fishing game than GPL zealots.

But wait, since IBM is taking the big pieces of the pie, it means the original GNU/Linux companies, who started and continue the momentum, are getting big pieces also. Big pieces of pie for everyone!

hahahahahaha

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[Dysan2k]

I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

Hmmm... If they're injecting $100 million into the software, I'm hoping they get $100+ million in return for the effort. Bank rolls that size do not come easy.

Personally, I'd love to see better sound/video support. That kinda cash would go a long way to opening up some drivers.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[jbplou]

IBMs product line is deverse enough that Linux can fall so flat on its face that no one runs it in 10 years and IBM will still be the worlds top IT company. Don't get me wrong IBM is heavily investing in Linux, but they have a huge Windows business plus a huge Unix business, plus an enterprize DBMS, etc all of which can be very profitable without Linux. They have there bets covered.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[nine-times]

I was by no means trying to paint a bleak picture for IBM. However, I believe they are quite concerned for the future of Linux and view the success of Linux being entangled with their own success. I don't mean this in terms of, "If Linux dies, IBM goes out of business," but if Linux were to fail, IBM [possibly] would have wasted quite a lot of investment and missed out on some opportunities.

One reason is that some business view IBM building their services on an open platform as a selling point, since they have less worry of vendor lock-in or dropped support. It probably goes without saying in this crowd that IBM can have more flexibility building services on Linux than a closed 3rd party OS (Windows, for example).

Another peripheral benefit IBM could see from Linux making it on the desktop would be an increased likelihood of selling PowerPC-based desktops. Granted, the XBox 2 bodes well for the possibility of a version of Windows supporting PPC, but that's purely speculative. We do know, however, that a lot of major Linux distros have been stepping up support of PPC recently, and with the good price/performance of the G5 and the speculative numbers on Cell, IBM has an opportunity to break into that desktop processor market if they can convince people to go with Linux.

So all I'm saying is, yes IBM would survive fine if Linux disappeared, but companies like that aren't just looking to survive. They're looking to be wildly successful, and they seem to view Linux as a great opportunity, and that's why they're pouring money into its development.

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[ZephyrXero]

"Maybe that's why they teamed up with Sony for the PS3? /random speculation"

Umm... are you talking about IBM here? Because they've also teamed up with Microsoft for the Xbox2, and Nintendo for the Revolution.... there will be a power chip in ever console (speaking loosely about the cell of course) in this comming generation, which should be great for programmers... But back to the point, how did this have anything to do with Linux? Last I had heard Sony is NOT using Linux for the PS3 either...

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[The Pagan]

This link should help with the direction of their moral compass: :http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0213,black,33412 ,1.html

Re:A BIG ally like IBM...

[randomiam]

Dennis Miller, is that you?

Put your money where your mouth is...

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

And develop an easy-install linux that works on virtually every big-vendor box with a good GUI. Something like OSX but free and for that weird instruction set everyone else uses. *flamebait, kill my karma*

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[_Sprocket_]

...and while you're at it, I'd also like a pony.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Raul654]

Forget the graphic part - the whole UI needs work. Package management is balkanized and bad in general, KDE/Gnome are becoming so heavy that you need a P4 just to run them, 'etc. You want to know the best way to use this money? Forget about handhelds and embedded systems - drop the whole $100 million into developing a good UI for desktop users.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[DoctorMO]

Your right that KDE/Gnome are becoming too heavy, they have big problems when it comes to modularity and I'm sure there working to redress them.

There are also problems with the lack of development on Xfree which is only now being addressed by xorg, but that will take time to get to anything like Mac/NextStep/Cocca

There are problems with hardware information standards, i.e there are none, it's all higled pigldy even if a module exists in the kernel for my dodar the connection between device information, hardware information and driver isn't as standard or compleat as would make it powerfull.

I say invest in Linux ground projects to better the information flow and standards in the core, look at what proper standards did for html, I would like to see that in Linux.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Cyhawkalewagee]

mmm an easy to install Linux and a decent GUI.

Heres a point we as a community could learn from microsoft.

Think about the Windows 9x/XP installation process.

Step 1: Put cd in, start computer

Step 2: Read welcome screen, hit 'agree'

Step 3: Wait, reboot machine

Step 4: Create user, and BAM your done.

Seriously, the common person really doesnt give two craps about Partitions, package installation, what a 'resoultion' or 'bit depth' is, or any of the normal basic *nix installation process we are all familar with.

Another part they could work on is some sort of 'auto-play' for cds. Alot of people dont know how to access a cd without it being auto-runed. So we need that sort of function in there as well.

There are plenty of very basic things that need to be done on the most basic levels before your auntie jenna will be using Linux to check her email. This is a good step, but more does need to be done.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[mattyrobinson69]

i cant speak for gnome, but kde runs just fine (about the same as windows 98, faster than xp) on a Pentium-MMX 233mhz, with most of the fancy things turned off. This was on slackware 10 on my gf's PC.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Err... good point. Enlightenment is prettier than Windows ever wuz. UI really means package management and installability combined with enough support that I could get my F*ing Linux box up and running again despite being an idiot. I just want a CD or 5 that I can throw into my parents' crap old Compaq computer, no matter the vendor, walk away from, and never have to touch again. I'd buy 5 IBM's if I knew that the second I pulled them out of the box, plugged them in, and threw in some passwords, I was done. An office setup, (openoffice) a web browser, (firefox) and a box locked up so tight that the only possible changes that could be made to the OS were user interface. Sounds easy to me, really, knowing the UNIX security setup... But every time I install a linux setup, I have to go to command line for SOMETHING, which leads me to MAN pages which leads me to frustration and contempt for my own slow and forgetful mind.

"Options? I have options? Cool! Wait.... they're not checkboxes? Uh."

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[thomasweber]

> Step 3: Wait, reboot machine
> Step 4: Create user, and BAM your done.

You forgot to mention that
a) You need to repeat step 3 for almost every installation of software (including printer drivers)

b) The time you save during installation is nothing compared to keep this system free of any sort of virus.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>KDE/Gnome are becoming so heavy that you need a P4 just to run them>>

Uh... I run kernel 2.6.10 and Gnome 2.8 (and Openoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird open simultaneously) on two PIII Thinkpads... one 700Mhz and the other 1.2Ghz though I run it at 800Mhz to save power. I also have the same setup on a Duron 1.2G and Athlon 1.3G though I stopped using them because they are noisy and hot.

RAM is the key here, not CPU speed. Beef up to 256MB min or half a gig and things are sweet.

Don't FUD.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[nine-times]

Those instructions *mostly* work if you have hardware that was extremely common when the OS was first distributed. However, it's not at all uncommon to have to search for the disks that came with your hardware or hunt down the drivers on the internet. Every machine I have, Windows fails to detect at least 1 thing.

Now, compare that to a Fedora Core 3 installation. The Fedora installation is just as easy (I think easier), but, in many cases, it will actually find your hardware without any driver hunting.

If you think it's hard to install Linux, you haven't tried in a while. Or have you been doing stage-1 Gentoo installs?

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[gilesjuk]

I believe the next Windows release will be quite heavy too, KDE and Gnome increase gradually in complexity. Windows "improvements" come in large chunks.

There has been talk of the next version of Windows requiring certain 3D features on the video card, basically to allow for a more appealing display.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[ssj_195]

I agree up to a point (for example, with my box - consisting of two different SATA drives; a TV Card; printer; scanner (which has no official XP drivers); wireless card, etc), the only thing I have to do upon a fresh install is install the nVidia binary drivers (that's assuming I want 3D acceleration - everything runs smoothly and at a good resolution with just the open source nv driver) - everything else "just works" without my having to google for, download and install drivers.

On the other hand, my cousin tried installing Linux and with a random sampling of the three network cards he had, *none* of them worked (although it is possible that simply some additional configuration was required; however, I had no idea where to start, and neither did he - ervything worked instantly under Windows). Linux is a hardware lottery, and when you win, installation is quicker and easier than Windows, but when you lose (and I'm guessing I'm in the minority in not having a single piece of hardware that is not compatible with Linux), it is a nightmare.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[rpdillon]

For one, package management varies 180 degrees from distro to distro.

I actually like a lot of distros from a design perspective, but I simply cannot stand RPM as a package managemrent system. This could well be because I am not doing this "correctly", but even with yum, I feel like the entire package design was never meant for a centralized, automated repository, and it breaks my heart that so many great distros use it (SuSe is one I love except for RPM).

Enter debian, which changed my Linux world as far as package management. It is head and shoulders above the RPM distros. I abandoned it because of the complexity of maintaining a cutting edge desktop that was reasonably stable. I found that upgrading a single package would sometimes bring down the house of cards of my carefully balanced dependencies between testing and unstable. Meh.

So, here I am, another Slashbot Gentoo fanboi. I run Gentoo on all my home computers (MythTV AMD Athlon XP box, AMD 64 desktop and Centrino laptop) and couldn't be more satisfied. It is package management nirvana...even major upgrades for for KDE, xorg-x11 or compiler upgrades go fairly smoothly. My only real gripe is that sometimes people post ebiuld that haven't been tested, so things can break "for no reason" and you have to go read around the forums to see if it's you, or something in the ebuild repository. I really don't mind waiting a couple of minutes for most compiles. Even kde-base and xorg-x11 are OK, I just leave them overnight. Besides, if you need to get up an moving in a hurry, just use the reference platform to get running, and compile in the background.

My point is that railing on "Linux package mangement" is a bit broad...I haven't even addressed Slackware packages because I don't know how they work (it's the only major distro that I've never used). And I'll tell you what: all of them are light years ahead of Windows.

Oh, BTW, I ran KDE on a PII 400 with no problems. And that was the MORE bulky KDE 2. KDE 3 is actually lighter as far as runtime resources. Linux is all about customization...you just have to know where to trim the fat. =)

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[grahamlee]

There are also problems with the lack of development on Xfree which is only now being addressed by xorg, but that will take time to get to anything like Mac/NextStep/Cocca

GNUstep, and we already have (thanks to using X) a client-server mechanism; something lacking in Aqua and badly implemented in NeXTSTEP. What's needed is for GNUstep to become easier to deploy and get more apps available - unfortunately because KDE and GNOME are already out there people are using them as the 'good enough' alternative. Just as Linux is the already out there, 'good enough' alternative to the HURD/Trix.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[nine-times]

Why do they need to do that when there already are easy-to-install distros that work with most common hardware? Fedora/Redhat, Mandrake, and Novell are probably the major ones, all easy to install, and all of them, if you stick the CD in a given Dell or HP or whatever, there's a good chance everything will work.

You mention OSX, but the reason OSX doesn't ever lack hardware support is that Apple controls the hardware. How is IBM going to control the hardware that Dell and HP use?

Plus, IBM has said they don't want to develop their own OS, but they'd rather partner with other companies (like Redhat and Novell) and help them to develop Linux. Their stated reasoning being (or so I've read somewhere), if they develop their own distro, then there's internal pressure to use it on all IBM products, whether it's a good fit or not. If they partner with Novell, and Novell's Linux isn't good for what they're doing, than maybe they've wasted money working with Novell, but they can still go with Redhat for their installs.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[jparp]

I see this comment allot and I don't understand it. I have Mandrake 10.1 running on a K6-266 with 256 megs of ram, 60 gig HD, and a full KDE and Gnome install. It runs fine! quite zippy actually.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[cbreaker]

I feel the same way in all respects. I used Redhat for a long time, and then Mandrake. I tried Debian, too, but didn't find it to be much different then an RPM based system.

I checked out Gentoo, and I was hooked. While I don't like the compile times, it's normally a non-issue when you're running on a fairly recent platform. The only parts that take a long time to compile are KDE, X, and GCC - none of which require to be upgraded very often. It's so easy to install new software and manage installed software.

Linux is a moving target, and until certian aspects of the system stabilize more, a source based distribution like Gentoo is the only way to (easily) run all the new nifty software that comes out.

And yea, KDE runs just fine on older hardware. It's easy for someone to say "AHHH BLOAT" just because the software can do more then it used to. In terms of performance, KDE is right up there.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[nine-times]

hmmm.... I guess I'd agree that it is more difficult to install drivers not included in the distro. Actually, I would include that in part of a larger complaint, that it's (in general) harder to install anything not included in the distro. Of course, people are trying to deal with that problem by creating large online repositories of software per-distribution (yum, apt-get, portage, whatever). It seems to work out well, but you still have the problem, I suppose, that it's hard to install things which are neither in the distro or the repositories.

Still, I don't think the trouble your cousin had is inherently a "problem with Linux". You have a piece of hardware that isn't supported by Linux (or maybe that distro), and there are no drivers. Well, ok. But try installing a piece of hardware that's not supported by Windows on a Windows machine, and I think you'll run into the same problem. So that's a problem with hardware being rare or crappy, or the hardware vendors not working to make their products Linux compatible, or whatever... but it doesn't mean that Linux developers are going about things the wrong way.

Granted, hardware vendors are generally more focussed on supporting Windows, and so you're more likely to find hardware that runs with Windows but not Linux than the other way around. However, I wouldn't say it's at all rare to find a computer that FC3 will find every piece of hardware. I've tried it on a number of different models from Dell, HP/Compaq, IBM, and custom built machines without any real problem.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[rseuhs]

Step 4: Create user, and BAM your done.

You just described essentially the SuSE setup process.

However on Windows you need:

Step 5: Install virus scanner
Step 6: Install Office
Step 7: Install Instant Messenger
Step 8: Install Firefox (you don't want to keep that IE-junk, do you?)
Step 9: Install drivers
.
.
.
.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. I have never had to reboot after installing printer drivers. Certain sound cards and almost all network cards also work fine without a reboot -- the installation routine never even prompts.

Nice try at the FUD though.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[ceswiedler]

Gentoo and Debian are centrally-manged free software projects. This means they can control all of the packages themselves, which does result in better integration, quality, etc.

RPMs are not centrally managed. There are the main YUM repositories (which work nearly as well as the debian and gentoo repositories) but you can also download RPMs from many third parties.

When was the last time you saw a third party offer a .deb which wasn't in the Debian repository? Do ATI or NVidia offer kernel packages for Debian or Gentoo? No; you have to either use the centrally-managed repository version, or compile it yourself.

On Windows and OSX, do you install all software directly through Windows Update / Apple Update from their servers? Third party software is an important part of widespread acceptance of an operating system. RPMs could be better but they are important for commercially-oriented distros.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[jc42]

Another suggestion for IBM: I just went to ibm.com, clicked on the "Shop for ... Notebooks" link, and looked around a bit. I was unable to find any notebook that included linux as an alternative OS. If it's there, it's very well hidden.

There was also no hint of AIX or any other unix-like system. The only OS choices were Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition and Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional.

This doesn't exactly give me a good feeling that they want to sell to us linux geeks.

OTOH, you can go to EmperorLinux, where you'll see a flock of IBM laptops for sale with linux installed, or dual-boot Windows/linux if you like.

So maybe IBM is just trying to support the independents like EmperorLinux? Think so?

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

easy-install? that has existed cince 2003. sorry but if you think that mandrake or redhat was hard to install then you must think that windows is impossible to install.

Good GUI? WTF is kde and Gnome? they are every bit as good as windows and their recent XP lameness.

i would prefer closer to the MAC GUI, and in useability I cant wait for that.

as for virtually every big box vendor... I do not understand. windows XP does not work well on the new DELLS. you have to download and install special drivers from dell to get XP to work. are you demanding that linux have more drivers available and not require any downloads but let windows not do that? WTF is that expectation?

come on get some REALISTIC expectations. if you are talking osx then that fails everything but GUI massively. I can not get OSX to install on anything but Apple branded computers. and there are NO drivers for that PCI scsi raid card I installed in that power mac I had to go and hunt down some.

when you have realistic desires, please come back.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Greyfox]

The Windows XP installation craps out on my room mate's computer every single time UNLESS the second CD drive's in the "Ejected" state (With its platter sticking out and waiting for a CD.)

Won't go in to how long it took me to figure THAT one out.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

This is a great, in detail, highly effective answer, for those who know how a makefile works. I, for one, don't. I'd love to, but I just don't want to put hundreds of hours into learning to manage a non-intuitive system. In making your point, you have proved mine. Messing with Linux is like playing in a huge pile of sand - as long as you know how to build a sandbox from the ground ground up, or do without, you're just fine. But if you just want a sandbox and don't know how to build one, you either go to the beach, or hire a contractor to put one in, or take the easiest course.... Hiring a contractor is expensive and going to the beach is not so convenient. So just buying a plastic kiddie pool, some sand at Home Depot, and calling it good enough. This is Microsoft software's customer base. What I want is, since this is software and not sandboxes, to be able to go out to Home Depot, get the mahogany and gold sandbox I always dreamed of my kids having, take it home, and throw it in the backyard for the same price.

Just the way I look at how Linux affects me as a standard half-techie end user. You talk about package management and how there are like fifty ways to do it, my eyes glaze over and say, "What?" Windows Update is easy to use and centralized and I could figure it out in less than five minutes. I'm sorry I'm such an idiot to prioritize my time differently but learning to be what is considered an "intelligent" linux user takes so much more time and processor power than learning to be an "intelligent" Microsoft user. Even basic the basic 'competence' bar is set too high. Are you using LILO or GRUB? I am using the blue one. KDE or Gnome or Linspire or Enlightenment? Whatever comes with Red Hat/ Mandrake. What makes Linux so unappealing to so many people (including myself) is how fast it can roll over on top of you into an all-consuming hobby you don't understand completely and eventually abandon.

I know I'm simplistic in some ways, but at some level pragmatism comes into it. I don't mean to bitch about something free, but if you REALLY wanted Linux to become something anyone could use and therefore make it easier for your friends, family, etc, to use Linux.

I note that Ubuntu does a lot of this already, but my original point was that if a big company like IBM is going to push for Linux to be a real competitor and moneymaker for them, they need to make it easier to use on a basic level. Not for coders - the toughest coders already prefer Linux half the time or more. But for people like me who just want their crap to work. That's the kind of project I respect the most in the linux community - Ubuntu sounds great, but I haven't had inclination to run a new distro since Red Hat sucked so bad for me. My two bits have now been spent. I'm sorry if I offended you continuously with my stupidity.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[swv3752]

The problem that most people see is they try running it on a system with 64mb of ram or less. Then they blame on processor speed, not realizing that if they upgraded the cpu but left the ram amounts the same, there would still be a performance problem.

Btw, I just recently installed MDK10.1 on a similiar system but only 60mb of RAM (4 was used for onboard video). It was rather slow, but then again so wasn't win98 that it came with. It also didn't help that it had a 5 1/4" 6gb hdd.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[swv3752]

You forgot, install updates without connecting to the internet. You know how WinXP sp1 is compromised in 6 minutes from having a live internet connection.

At least Mandrake has the option to install updates during the install process.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[LnxAddct]

" And develop an easy-install linux that works on virtually every big-vendor box with a good GUI"

But that already exists ;)
Regards,
Steve

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[rpdillon]

You're sorely mistaken about the nature of Gentoo package management. It uses ebuilds, which are simply scripts, and they are stored centrally. But they can be scripted to pull files from anywhere, and perform actions to install them. The files the ebuild grabs do not have to be grabbed from a central server (many are not), and if I want to add a package, I can. That's why Gentoo has an ebuild for NVidia drivers, VMWare, and JEdit. Whereas Debian has none of these. RPM based distros have similar problems. Ebuilds don't even have to break EULAs - you can program the ebuild to download the files from the owner's site, so there is no issue of distribution right infringement.

Bottom line: Windows could perfectly well use and ebuild system, and indeed, any OS could. Ebuilds are extremely flexible, and as far as I can tell, they are The Right Way to handle software installs.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[LnxAddct]

You've obviously never installed windows... I wish it was that simple. The only time it is ever that simple is if your using a vendor provided recovery disk. Otherwise you would boot to a nearly unusable system with absoultely no software other then a browser, media player and paint. If you want some functionality like a recovery cd install where you just pop in a disk and away it goes use Yoper. If you want something with more choice but still easy to use and install, get Fedora or Suse. (despite the distro wars, both are really nice) The Fedora install more or less consists of choosing whether you want to do a desktop install, server install, workstation install, or advanced install. Assuming you select desktop install, everything else is done for you other then a few quick questions (like name and stuff). Everything is autodetected (although you are asked to verifiy it and can change it if you so desire). The Suse install, while different, is just as easy. And regardless of your choice of distro, you'll be left with a freshly installed system that is secure, does not "call home" or have any ports open unless you specified differently and contains enough software that most users could probably get away with never having to install anything else ever. Not to mention an easy to use updating system that updates all of your software, not just select microsoft choices. As far as I'm concerned, Linux beats Microsoft and it is MS that needs to catch up and learn a thing or two from us.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[rpdillon]

Well put. I recognize and respect your position.

Linux has been my hobby, and because of that, became my job. I simply love tinkering with it. But hey, my wife, both my sisters, and my parents are more like you (as are most people), and I am reminded daily of what regular people, or half-techie people (as you say) need.

With a due sense of caution, I assert that you could, once installed, manage a Gentoo system quite easily. Indeed, you would find it to be a fabulous investment. The documentation rivals anything put out by anyone else, and the message boards are fantastic. Once you got used to searching for programs and installing them effortlessly using portage, you'd wonder how you ever did it any other way. The commands are simple, though there is a learning curve in other areas (USE flags come to mind - they're great, but can be daunting as hell at first). But it is a great way to spend 10 hours of your life.

Don't get me wrong...I don't recommend Gentoo to Joe Blow, but if you tried RedHat and didn't like it (RPM distros suffer from dependecy hell, a most aptly named syndrome), you may be interested. You brought yourself far enough to pick up Linux in the first place, you may just find that Gentoo has the things you thought were missing from other distros.

In any case, you did not offend me. Your position is far more valid than mine (in terms of how many people it applies to), and we need to find a way to retain the power of a well-designed OS like Gentoo and make it more accessible. So maybe we agree. =) Here's to hoping IBM can help work towards that goal.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[ckaminski]

Fedora Core 2 and KNOPPIX are the only distributions out of a few I've tried that managed to successfully boot on my Dell Latitude CPx and my HP Omnibook 6000 and be able to connect to the network. I'm still having some WiFi issues, but wired ethernet works.

SuSE 8.2 and 9.2 would lock up at PCMCIA initialization.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

As easy as say, riding a bicycle, or taking a swim?

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ponies may grow on grass, but not on trees.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[labratuk]

Package management is balkanized and bad in general

Right, whereas windows doesn't even have any package management.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[mark_lybarger]

no hardware vendor can successfully sell linux laptops when the os doesn't even properly support them.

i'd love to see a linux distribution with proper notebook "hibernation". you close the lid, it should go to sleep. stop using my battery. i open the lid and turn it on, it should come back where it was. the swsusp2 kernel patch gets very very close. but it's a pain to patch in, and is very picky about kernel version, etc. if there's a distro that includes that by default (and provides updates), i would love to hear it.

those computers from EmperorLinux are 2k. that's twice what i paid for a laptop with comparable hardware. no thanks!

oh yeah, and what ibm is trying to support is the big iron in the server rooms. they make a pretty penny selling the hardware to go along with their db2, websphere, notes, and other idiodic software licenses. for some reason people who run the server rooms like the big reciepts they pay out for the software licenses to get that warm and fuzzy inside for having the DB2 or oracle name behind their data. nothing but silence from them though when the database crashes because of some crazy wacked out disk raid drive that didn't work and kept the business down for 1/2 a day, and there's no clustering database because that's just way too much $$, isn't one db good enough?..

ibm is investing in an operating system for the server rooms, while consumers are migrating to more portable hardware. move along.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Installing Linux is for people who know how to do more with a computer than pushing the "on" button.

For everyone else, there's OSX, Windoze, AOHell...you know the drill...

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[Stevyn]

I've had Mandrake 10 on a K6-2 550 Mhz with 384 (around there) mb of ram and a 40 gig hd. It ran very very slowly. Putting gentoo with KDE compiled for that processor also ran slowly. Maybe our viewpoints of responsiveness, loading time, and application performance are very different.

Re:Put your money where your mouth is...

[DoctorMO]

Can you impliment Qt as a layer?

Start at home!

[tmasssey]

I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...

Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!

Re:Start at home!

[badmammajamma]

What about this...

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/pr ec onfig.jsp?id=2005-02-17+08%3A29%3A22.845191R&S_TAC T=104CBW71&S_CMP=&s=

Re:Start at home!

[LoudMusic]

I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...

Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!

Kind of like Sony making mp3 devices and suing people for copyright infringement ...

I tried to run Domino 6 on a Linux server and ran into a few snags. I find it really frustrating that they don't make all their servers equal.

Another thing I've found that seems a "no brainer" to me would be to distribute Domino on a CD with the Linux install included. It's not like it costs them money. The installer CD could boot the machine and give the same simple options that the Domino installer does - application, mail, or database server. Then it would configure and install the Linux OS tuned for Domino and install Domino. How hard can this possibly be?

I think there are LOTS of instances where this could be the case. Companies that produce server applications that require a dedicated machine generally require Windows. Some of them support Linux. None of them make a single install disk that takes a fresh machine and fully configures it. That is what we need.

Re:Start at home!

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want them to withhold $100 Million until they get their software to work first?

Re:Start at home!

[badmammajamma]

Nm...I'm an idiot. Thought I was looking at a a client.

Re:Start at home!

[nine-times]

Except Lotus isn't nearly as important for IBM's long-term strategic goals as Linux is. IBM's big cash cows are hardware (big iron) and services (not software, but setting up software, building custom apps, etc). Truth is, it might be just as good or better for IBM to have a FOSS groupware package that they can be paid to set up and configure on their systems than to actually sell the software.

In fact, I wouldn't be totally surprised if in 5 years, IBM isn't really selling Lotus anymore, but pushes some open-sourced groupware package from Novel or something (Hula?).

Re:Start at home!

[joschm0]

My pet peeve is that they abandoned Via Voice right after I bought it and it only runs using an old version of Blackdown java.

Re:Start at home!

[enoyls]

I believe that is where a large portion of the $100,000,000 will be spent. You have to read between the lines a little, but it's alluded to in CNet's coverage. http://news.com.com/IBM+plays+up+Workplace+suite/2 110-1012_3-5548304.html?tag=nl/ http://news.com.com/IBM+to+invest+100+million+in+L inux+push/2100-1012_3-5580976.html?tag=nefd.top/ Sooner or later IBM is going to bite the bullet and move its 300,000 employees to Linux, and at that time they had better have a better solution than using wine. Workplace Collaborative Service appears to be their first step in that direction.

Re:Start at home!

[Ford Prefect]

I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation [Lotus Notes] still doesn't have a Linux client.

To which I say - hooray!

It's awful, and while I don't actually use it myself, I pity those who do... ;-)

Re:Start at home!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Another thing I've found that seems a "no brainer" to me would be to distribute Domino on a CD with the Linux install included. It's not like it costs them money.

Yeah, 'cause we all KNOW that helpdesk support is free. You think someone's going to buy that Domino+LInux CD and not expect *everything* on it to be supported? How ready/willing do you think they are to deal with such support?

Re:Start at home!

[Ingolfke]

It could be that market for Lotus Notes users that run Linux on the desktop isn't large enough to warrent investing in a Linux client. It could be the same with the server as well... the market may not provide a significant return on the investment.

Re:Start at home!

[metamatic]

IBM already does have "Linux and Domino on a CD"--for IBM sales people.

However, I'm told that IBM absolutely will not be distributing Linux to customers, for legal reasons. (And no, I don't know what those reasons are.)

SuSE have a Domino pack that configures the system for optimum Domino performance. Once you do that, setting up Domino is as easy as on any other platform.

Re:Start at home!

[tweek]

Huh...I would think that THE ENTIRE FUCKING STAFF OF IBM is large enough to warrant investing in a Linux client. Remember the repeated statements about Linux desktops throughout IBM by EOY or some such? Well those IBM'ers are going to need Notes Clients on those shiny new Linux desktops!

Re:Start at home!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing I've found that seems a "no brainer" to me would be to distribute Domino on a CD with the Linux install included. It's not like it costs them money.

SLES and RHEL both cost money AFAIK.

Re:Start at home!

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have noticed the term "Workplace" occurring more than a few times on that Lotus page you linked to.

From TFA:

The money will be used to help this push towards greater collaboration and will add Linux-based elements to IBM's Workplace software.

Workplace is a suite of programs and tools that allow workers to get at core business applications no matter what device they use to connect to corporate networks.

Granted, that quote is written in IBM-market-speak. But, from what I've been able to find out, Workplace is essentially IBM's new model for groupware. Not surprisingly, it's based on Websphere and DB/2 on the server, with either a browser-based client, or a rich client based on Eclipse. Both the browser and rich clients run on Linux.

I don't think even IBMers will describe Notes/Domino as premier anything for much longer.

Re:Start at home!

[tmasssey]

That's true: however, Notes R7 Beta 3 does not support DB/2 on Linux. When R6 was released, iNotes for Web did not support Linux. Sametime did not support Linux, and Workplace is not feature complete on Linux.

The killer is that the vast majority of these *are* supported properly on AIX! You mean to tell me that they can make it for one UNIX but not the other?!?

Re:Start at home!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...

Lotus Notes is a dead end. It was a fantastic idea way back before web apps became possible and practical. Now that they are, there's no reason for IBM to sink more $$$ into Notes. These heavy, client-focused/based, all-in-one platforms (including Exchange BTW) are not growth areas. A Linux client would be a waste of resourcecs.

Re:Start at home!

[ckaminski]

$100 it's 100% related to the SCO mess, and once that is over, all things Linux related at IBM will change.

Re:Start at home!

[d1v1d3byz3r0]

I'd also imagine that it has a lot to do with IBM's Redhat and SuSE relationships. Putting Domino and Linux on a CD would effectively be a form of an IBM Linux Distribution. That means they'd have to provide support for kernel patches. They'd also be implicity liable for security vulnerabilities in software that they did not make.

Re:Start at home!

[autiger]

Services does account for over 50% of IBM's revenue now, but don't fool yourself; software has the best margin of any of their product lines. And we already know what IBM's vision of the future is; it's called the Workplace Rich Client, it's based on Eclipse, and it will run on Windows, OS/X and Linux.

IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold

[Stanistani]

Why do I get the feeling that in five years you will ask the man-in-the-street what Linux is and they will reply, "That's that IBM stuff, right? Runs on all the 'puters!"

Re:IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold

[Otter]

If this is anything like the last campaign, the man in the street will point down and say "Linux! They're the idiots who spray painted these penguins on my sidewalk!"

Re:IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold

[Neurotoxic666]

Linux bashing on Slashdot? ... Hehe. That'll be funny :)

Re:IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold

[jc42]

... in five years you will ask the man-in-the-street what Linux is and they will reply, "That's that IBM stuff, right?

Heh. We're getting there fast. I recently came off a several-year project to wean a big corporation (who shall remain nameless here to protect the clueless ;-) of their big IBM mainframes and move most of their stuff onto a flock of linux (RedHat) servers scattered around the Net. One problem the sales guys had to deal with was convincing their upper management to sign off on what they hadn't ever heard of and which they considered fly-by-night stuff.

The approach that worked was to show them some of IBM's web sites, and say "See? Linux is an IBM product."

Now, most readers here will probably think this is a joke. While I agree it's tremendously funny; fact is that it worked. They didn't see through the rather ambiguous wording at all. To their fuzzy minds, linux is indeed an IBM product, since IBM sells it.

Actually, the techies at the big corp also thought this was really funny. Most of them have either linux or OSX (or both) on their personal machines. And when I set up demos of our stuff via web sites, they knew exactly what to do with them. In fact, they mostly lost interest in the GUI stuff we were developing, and only wanted to talk about the Web interface, which became a significant part of my job.

But there is a widespread attitude among management that "computer" and "IBM machine" are synonyms. If it doesn't come from IBM, it's not a computer. And Microsoft is a division of IBM, of course.

We've had this attitude in the business community for over 40 years now, and we're probably not going to change it. The best approach probably is to get the message out that "Linux is an IBM product". This is all that most managers will want to see, and they don't want to hear any discussion of the details. Details are for underlings.

We'll know we've won when we start hearing the media talk about linux as an "IBM product". Most of the media consists of people who also think that IBM is the only real computer company, Microsoft makes IBM software, and all those other companies are insignificant.

We can probably also add to the confusion by pointing out that IBM has always supported free software. They sell computers; those computers come with all that software at no extra charge; this has been true since the 1950's. That'll be convincing. Details like "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" is way over their pretty talking heads (though some of them will understand "free as in disk space" ;-).

Outside the geek community, fuzzy thinking and fuzzy speech is the norm.

Re:IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean "Linux! They're the idiots who spray painted these penguins on my sidewalk over the butterflies that the MSN idiots spray-painted over ..."

Actually, an original idea would be to imprint a penguin footmark in the sidewalk >:)

I'm in.

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.

I pledge to install Linux on at least one PC, one laptop, and one handheld. How much of the $100M do I get?

Re:I'm in.

[Anonymous Coward]

you were already paid in full that was your $00.02

Re:I'm in.

[heritage727]

I pledge to install Linux on at least one PC, one laptop, and one handheld. How much of the $100M do I get?

I'm going to be installing Linux on an IBM mainframe soon, so you don't get as much as I do.

Re:I'm in.

[ThisIsFred]

Was it IBM hardware though?

Re:I'm in.

[runderwo]

Only on Slashdot would a PC be considered a "powerful server".

Dr. Evil says

[passion]

one-hundred-meeelion-dollars!

Re:Dr. Evil says

[sv0f]

Conjecture: +5 Funny comments with no replies are not actually funny.

(You're welcome)

Re:Dr. Evil says

[jc42]

Yeah, but have you noticed how often the replies are funnier than the first message, but they don't get a +5 Funny rating?

desktop Linux

[Mantorp]

The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.

I know it fits inbetween handhelds and servers somewhere, but it seems there's more Linux growth on those two ends (handhelds and servers) than in the middle, on desktops of Joe user.

Re:desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I had eye surgery once. Best thing that ever happened to me. Without knowing anything about your particular situation, or even if you have eyes, I can unequivocally recommend it to you.

Re:desktop Linux

[ThisIsFred]

but it seems there's more Linux growth on those two ends (handhelds and servers) than in the middle, on desktops of Joe user.

There has to be some growth between the keyboard and the chair, first. As it turns out, all the pretty colors and primitives on the screen don't convey too much meaningful information, and the desktop PC is still primarily an entertainment device with happens also run a couple useful apps. My users are having a hard time grasping the multi-user design in Windows 2000/XP: "Why can't we install Spyware Trojan Webcalender 2.0 anymore?"

Re:desktop Linux

[ThisIsFred]

"...which happens to..."

sorry about all the typos. :-/

Re:desktop Linux

[Mantorp]

so the reason it's popular in handhelds is because it's put there by smart people and dummies can't change it, and the reason it's popular on servers is that only smart people use servers. Desktops are used by idiots. I'm paraphrasing a bit, but that's what your comment boils down to.

Re:desktop Linux

[ThisIsFred]

That's hardly what my comment "boils down to". If that's what I meant to say, I would have said, "it's not popular because users are too stupid to learn how to use it." The problem, and I'm fairly certain I made this crystal clear, is that there is a different expectation that applies to desktop users. My problem is with ignorance, not stupidity.

IBM Linux Push Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM spends dough.
Pushing Linux for all apps.
Why do they hate Bill?

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[cduffy]

Should be obvious
Why their hatred for Bill Gates
Look at OS/2.

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/2, how true.
Gates will never live that down.
He is filled with shame.

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

They hate him becasue his is a shrewd business man who forced them into a licensing deal for DOS many years ago and becasue of this it enabled him to create windows thus driving then out of the desktop OS market becasue OS/2 could not gain enough market share against to compete.

Did that answer your question.

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[temojen]

1. Bill Lied about having a CP/M clone
2. Compaq
3. OS/2

Probably more

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[k3v0]

they do not hate bill
hate is not as strong as love
they would love more bills!

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Rhetoric questions
Were not meant to be answered.
A moron is you.

Re:IBM Linux Push Haiku

[cduffy]

Writing in this thread,
Proper form is now haiku
Please make an attempt.

"Linux software"

[rpsoucy]

Now "Linux" is its own classification of software? Come on, it's bad enough you people call it an operating system... ;-)

Re:"Linux software"

[ArsonSmith]

Linux has grown far from its humble beginings of an OS Kernel. I refer to my computer as a Linux computer. At our company the Windows team is called the Intel Team yet my Intel based Linux systems don't belong to their group. They are called "Linux servers"

The desktop

[bogaboga]

Let IBM slap any flavor of Linux on the desktop or pay some group to do it. Then I will really be happy with them. I know that my wishes do not determine IBM's strategy whatsoever, but this does not prevent me from wishing.

Right now Ubuntu looks OK for the Gnomers and XandrOS is just fine for the KDErs [IMHO]. The most important thing here is to have a desktop that works out-of-the-box.

Re:The desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

If IBM really wants to help the Linux community, what they should do is produce a completely modern computer with full open source hardware driver support for Linux. Whether it be the ethernet and sata controllers, audio and graphics cards, or any other piece of hardware, IBM can win itself a huge-antic chunk of the maket if they can provide open source driver support equivalent to what Windows has. On a side note, I wonder why SGI hasn't tried soethign like this. They developed opengl, what's stopping them from releasing a modern graphics card for Linux, aside from the small market?

Re:The desktop

[ssj_195]

A laptop with these features, possibly with a customised distro, would be even better (I'm not sure how much control IBM continues to exert over their ex-Laptop department, though) - this means 100% working suspend and resume with no crappy hacks required, no need to install drivers, hardware accelerated 3D + dual-head (for presentations) from the first boot, etc. Their laptops always seem to have *some* niggling incompatibility with Linux (e.g. the SD card reader on the X40) which they could probably address very easily.

Re:The desktop

[tooyoung]

This is missing the point to an extent. IBM does not care about Linux on the desktop or laptop. IBM sold its entire PC business because it no longer finds PCs to be as profitable. IBM will make money selling hardware and services in an 'on demand' style. To them, hardware and services are the commodities, not software. This is where Linux fits in.

Putting the money to good use?

[Cyhawkalewagee]

Perhaps they could spend a little of that 100m to debunking insane statements from the Microsoft goon squad such as http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0 2/15/1258244&tid=109&tid=163&tid=11&tid=218/ Martin Taylor. and the like.

Re:Putting the money to good use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have any particular insane statements in mind?

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

So true, I was just on IBM's website trying to find a Lotus Notes client for Linux... there is none.

I have the an older version R5 running under wine but wasn't able to install 6.5.1

Businesses and Linux

[oprahwinfree]

With companies like IBM putting a lot of effort into pushing Linux, it may make businesses that are reluctant to adopt an OS that has a perceived lack of support behind it more willing to try it out.

This is good news and certainly a major push for Linux.

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh Richard, calm down...

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Anita Coney]

Question: Why do we commonly call aspirin "aspirin" when it's really acetylsalicylic acid?

Answer: Because it's easier you fucking moron!

OS/2

[sporty]

Did IBM put this much into OS/2? Man I loved that os...

Re:OS/2

[Bri3D]

IBM put something on the order of BILLIONS into OS2. I also think it was one of the best OS ever made. It was starting to succeed, too(that's why microsoft pulled out-it was eating Windows sales) making its demise even more depressing.

IBM is on the right track.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Workplace is a suite of programs and tools that allow workers to get at core business applications no matter what device they use to connect to corporate networks. One of the main focuses of the initiative will be to make it easier to use Linux-based desktop computers and mobile devices with Workplace."

Clearly IBM sees how usefull small portable devices can be and their future in the work place. This is great for serious developers of small proprietary aps for hand-helds.

If you consider the fact that by focusing on interoperability and flexability OSS and Linux is light years ahead of MS and other closed coded corps. Of course the ability to keep your small sub aps proprietary is important, but as both Linus and Richard have stated this is the key to technological innovation. If you do not like the crap being sold you change it.

cash injection will be used to help its customers?

[Anita Coney]

Shouldn't customers be paying IBM for help?

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Cyhawkalewagee]

Its simple really. There needs to be an umbrella of sorts to combine all aspects of Linux(kernal) and Software together. Because explaining to Auntie Jenna WHAT a kernel is, its much easier to just called it 'linux'. The common person understands somewhat, what 'linux' is. (btw, pronounced Lee-nooks) Personaly, I belive we should all get past trying to retain the geekness of Linux, and focus on getting the common man/woman to use it by making the system easier to use, and increase general knowledge of the system. If were ever going to beat microsoft, we'll need to combine forces, fighting over what to CALL the damned thing gets us no where :P So uh, yeah, just call it linux, know your right and move on ;)

how about a IBM distro

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe IBM should buy Slackware, or build a Debian clone (as if there aren't enough deb/clones out there already)...

but serously, with PatV getting older and possibly becoming too ill to continue development of Slackware i would like to see Slackware maintained by competent Linux developers that will preserve Pat's philosophy of Slackware being a stable and secure no-nonsence kind of distro...

Re:how about a IBM distro

[gelfling]

IBM already has a good relationship with RH and SuSE. Why would they need to take over Slackware no matter how good it is? And why does Slack bother with SPARC and Alpha ports? Can't they leave all the 'I got this kernel to compile on my fucking sundial' shit to the BSD heads?

Re:how about a IBM distro

[mattyrobinson69]

I think IBM would prefer a more friendly distro like SuSE or Red Hat (im not saying i dont like slackware - i used to love slackware until i found gentoo)

Re:how about a IBM distro

[Senzei]

"Can't they leave all the 'I got this kernel to compile on my fucking sundial' shit to the BSD heads?"

Well, but, I have to have linux on the sundial though, so I can express what I am doing as 'mv / /dev/null'

Yeah, I probably did that wrong, but it isn't too bad of a linux joke for a windows admin.

Re:how about a IBM distro

[ckaminski]

Who else here cut their teeth on Yggdrasil?

Yea, crm

[sammyo]

They had a huge booth at LinuxWorld Boston, but the hot displays were CRM and retail point of sale solutions. ;-) Beware of any open source labeled a "Solution".

I had this visual fantasy of rms charging through the commercial side of the event like Carrie Nation with her ax.

Bitter

[jones77]

Anybody get the feeling that IBM is just that little bit bitter?

Re:Bitter

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anybody get the feeling that IBM is just that little bit bitter?

Eh? Based on what, exactly?...

Not your desktop, you dolts. The servers.

[gelfling]

Clearly this is almost entirely focused on the server side aka Workplace which is a huge complex assembly of AIX, Linux, Python, Java and RDBMSs. This is aimed at business space that wants to use Linux for things like CRM, Peoplesoft, SAP, Oracle, Seibel and custom made apps.

Re:Not your desktop, you dolts. The servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the ROUSes too.

Re:Not your desktop, you dolts. The servers.

[mpcooke3]

heh, yeah their best bet on the desktop front is currently Suns java desktop or linspire.

Doesn't inspire confidence that we'll achieve desktop linux this year does it.

Re:Not your desktop, you dolts. The servers.

[CAIMLAS]

This might be corelary, but recently the linux kernel has gotten a slew of IBM Thinkpad centric modules added. I think they're in 2.6.9.

There's proper support for pretty much everything on a Thinkpad now (except for ACPI, though that might merely be a function of my X server).

smart move

[dogfull]

for (ibm; linux == future; ++money)
++kernel-development

In other words, the 100M USD will probably be spend on kernel development. IBM sees bussiness in linux. IBM makes money out of linux. They would be stupid not to invest in it.

Credibility

[Billy the Mountain]

This might seem obvious, but having IBM endorse Linux (by money infusions and advertising) really helps the OS community spread the software into mainstream business. My supervisor is so old-school and tends to favor MS products, but with this kind of support from IBM, I can now at least get a couple of Linux servers up and running without complaints and my supervisor can see the reliability that exceeds Windows in these instances first-hand.

BTM

Re:Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

>>My supervisor is so old-school and tends to favor MS products>>

Old school???? How old is he? Thirty?

Old school is Unix. It just happens to be new school as well. MS is a hiccup.

Re:Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

No way, sonny boy. How old are you? 35?

Old school is an IBM 370, JCL, and VM/CMS.

Re:Credibility

[TheLoneGundam]

No way, buddy, how old are you? 40? Old school is an IBM 1410, and Autocoder.

Re:Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

My supervisor is so old-school and tends to favor MS products
That's why he is your supervisor.

Re:Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

>> My supervisor is so old-school and tends to favor MS products
> That's why he is your supervisor.

Heh, Are you a troller in training?

I thought linux was free...

[GatesGhost]

they'll just end up having one guy go around installing red hat all day and blow the rest of the money on coke and whores.

Re:Minix

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be kidding ... the fact that Minix was so crappy was the reason Linus started out writing Linux in the first place. Go look for "Torvalds Tanenbaum Minix" on Google ...

Selling Their PC Division...

[Jameth]

I think whoever said that IBM was selling their PC division as a way to combat their vulnerability to Microsoft was correct. Otherwise, this sort of activity would leave them rather vulnerable.

I don't get it...

[mtrupe]

Slashdot is all about open source, and most readers of slashdot believe in open source, and free software, and in its success. Why then does IBM *need* to invest so much money in it?

This is intriguing. IBM seems to get it. A bunch of people create free software, which IBM then takes and sells.

1. Do nothing.
2. Take software written for free by enthusiasts.
3. Profit! ...Here come the moderators!
http://fromthemorning.blogspot.com/

Re:I don't get it...

[superskippy]

Software still needs to be paid for- programmers gotta eat. In fact the amount of open source that is written for money is quite significant- much of the kernel and mozilla/firefox/thunderbird etc. IBM have put much development into the kernel- hence nearly getting sued by SCO. Most of the money worldwide in computing is in hiring people to solve your problem, not buying a lot of software- this is what IBM's huge consultancy arm does. These people are best served by great software being available for low prices, so IBM has a vested interest in free software being good.

Re:I don't get it...

[LourensV]

This is intriguing. IBM seems to get it. A bunch of people create free software, which IBM then takes and sells.

Not really. A bunch of people create free software. IBM sells hardware and services, and it needs a software infrastructure for that. It could develop its own (and has, in the past), but it's much more efficient to cooperate with others who are in the same situation.

If you have n companies who all need the same software to deliver their core business, then all of them could develop such software in-house and spend x million dollar on it, or they could develop it together (protected from each other by the GPL) and spend x/n million dollars each. They can still compete (and make money) on their core business, while spending less. Everybody wins.

And the funny thing is that creating this means of cooperation between producers of software was never RMS' intention, his concern was the rights of users. Go figure :).

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different from any other business?

trees, coal, oil, water, gravel... they're harvested, processed, and sold.

OSS is another resource.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. I use OSS in my for-profit business. Am I going to lower my prices based on the cost savings unless competition forces me to? You bet your sweet bippy I'm not.

So long and thanks for all the OSS, suckers.

Re:I don't get it...

[TheRaven64]

But do you get a competitive advantage from using OSS? If so, then there's nothing stopping your competitor from using the same software - and Pop! goes your competitive advantage. So maybe you make some enhancements to the software, get it back again. Now there are two versions, yours and the one everyone else is using. How much is it costing you to keep merging in changes from the community to your version? More than the competitive advantage gains you? If so, maybe you should contribute your changes back, let someone else deal with merging them (and make sure no future changes break your changes). Now your competitors have the same software again, so you lose your competitive advantage. Maybe it's time you added some new features?

Re:I don't get it...

[malkavian]

If you make more money, you spend more, putting it back into circulation.
Plus, if others are bright enough in your sector to do the same thing (use OSS and save money), you can bet that you'll be forced to lower your prices to stay competitive. And all the others in the market segment will also need to find ways to match the price.
Enjoy the time while you're ahead. If you can make more money by using FOSS, then it's doing exactly what it was intended to do.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nearly getting sued?

Uhhh...where have you been for the last two years?

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM has figured out that the operating system doesn't matter. Yes, despite all the furor on Slashdot about OS wars, nobody but hobbyists care about the OS itself. They care about getting some job done, which means the apps that run on the computer. Most people couldn't care less about how that app starts running.

Take the case of the periodic "supercomputer X runs Linux" story. Does Linux actually do the calculations that are the purpose of the supercomputer (climate modelling, nuclear simulation, whatever)? Of course not. The OS is just a loader for an executable file in this case. The reason people use Linux in such cases is becase they have a one-off system and there's no way to buy a commercial equivalent even if they wanted to. Availability of source is popular for academics that want to spend their grant money on implementing 80% of some distributed computing scheme, as well. But the "Linux" part of Linux is in such cases completely irrelevant. In these cases, the operating system just doesn't matter. It's a trivial part of the package, not matter how many lines of code it is.

Similarly, IBM long ago figured out it wasn't in the business of selling operating systems. They sell service packages to big business. Their apps are a part of that. And again, the OS matters not at all, except to load those apps. They used to have AIX to do that, but they've realized they don't have to spend money to develop and support the OS if they take advantage of the free work people put into Linux.

It's not about increased capabilities or improved technology. It's simply about cutting costs in an area that is not "mission critical" and that really contributes nothing toward the product you're actually selling to customers.

Linux: the OS for when it just doesn't matter.

Re:I don't get it...

[mspohr]

It's not about the software.

IBM makes money from services. That is their competitive advantage. That will always be their competitive advantage.

IBM are the do-everything company

[superskippy]

The thing to remember about IBM is that the are the do-everything company. Where Sun, or Microsoft, or Apple etc. try and sell you one vision of the future, IBM invest in everything, and let you decide what you want.

Want to run Linux sir? No problem! Or Windows? No problem too. Proprietary UNIX? We've got it. Have we got some bizarre other operating systems? Have we ever!

We'll sell you an Intel server, a RISC based unix server, an AMD server, any bizarre server you like. Stuck in the 80s and can't decide whether you want fat clients or thin clients and a mainframe? No problem, we've got mainframes, we've got PCs (until recently, of course).

My point is that IBM may be investing $100m in Linux, but chances are, they are also investing $100m in everything else too. That's the IBM way- because they never stick all of their chips on one technology, they never win big (like Wintel has done), but they never lose their shirts either (like Sun looks like doing, and HP looks like doing with Itanic)

Re:IBM are the do-everything company

[Anonymous Coward]

Never lose their shirts? Tell me IBM fan-boi, were you still in your fantasy bubble during the mid-90s..or were you just born yesterday? IBM was knock knock knockin on death's door just 10 short years ago.

Re:IBM are the do-everything company

[stevesliva]

They stuck all of their chips in mainframes, won big, lost big, and are now winning big again. But you're right, the bets are hedged now.

Keeping alive legacy products is a great way to keep your customers, rather than telling them to go to hell. Anyone who bet their company on Itanium-- to hell with support for legacy hardware-- is now doing some serious, belated backtracking and firing of CEOs and whatnot.

Re:IBM are the do-everything company

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that mainframes were a definate big win for ibm.

I don't know about you...

[AltGrendel]

...I just want 10%.

Then I'd be happy. Um, happier.

Desktop? Are you mad???

[gelfling]

There are people here who still have emotional scars from OS/2. Trust me, IBM will never ever ever ever try to take the lead in end user desktop OS's ever again. They may very well follow others into the Linux desktop world but they will never ever ever butt heads with MS again for out-front dominance.

And if they wanted to, then they should just buy any all of the following:

Xandros
Lycoris
ELX

Which are built as commerical Linux replacements of Windows desktops and not for the Krispy Kreme & Black T-shirts crowd.

cheap pc

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see the "M" in the headline at first... "IBM Puts $100 Behind Linux Push"... I thought they'd bought into that whole sub-$100 PC issue being bandied about here on /.

Re:Cough Cough

[Jeremy Erwin]

The "G4" or PPC 7xxx chips are made by "Freescale Semiconductor". IBM makes the "G3" (PPC 7x0) (which isn't used by Apple anymore), the "G5" (PPC 9x0), and the POWERx chips.

Get yourself an Ubuntu CD.

[khasim]

Everything works just like you say it should.

And "auntie jenna" will never install an OS on her computer. She will use whatever came with it when she bought it or whatever someone sets up on it.

Watched the flash demo of IBM Workspace

[Danathar]

From what I've read it seems that IBM is going to commit to making sure that there is a LINUX (Mac too?) client for IBM workspace.

I watched the demo and it looks interesting enough. The question is, do you trust IBM not to lock you into their "all encompassing" back-office infrastructure with no-interoperability? Or Do you just want to swallow the pill and drink MS's cool aid?

What I would like to see is some sort of reasonably easy to program middleware that is cross-platform (XUL for example) to take the place of platform specific proprietary clients. This way the user's PC is not weighed down.

I suppose some people might point out that you can already kind of do this with X terminals, but it seems that using the browser as the way to do everything, either through XUL or HTML/J2EE..ect is the direction people WANT to move in.

Re:Watched the flash demo of IBM Workspace

[metamatic]

Workplace is all built on open standards. J2EE, LDAP authentication, SQL.

Look at Domino. It may be a proprietary software suite, but it supports every open standard out there--Java, HTML, LDAP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, CORBA, XML, SQL, ODBC, ...

Re:Watched the flash demo of IBM Workspace

[einhverfr]

The question is, do you trust IBM not to lock you into their "all encompassing" back-office infrastructure with no-interoperability?

Wow, what a question. If I had mod points, I would mod you up.

Personally, I think that *any* FOSS contribution is a good step. Today it is Linux, maybe in 3 years, we will be talking PostgreSQL. As time goes on, IBM will likely find that they have to keep contributing higher up the stack. It is like Dominos ;-)

IBM and Linux

[_LORAX_]

Let me just say that I run Linux on IBM hardware and for the most part it's ok. The hardware is managed to within an inch of it's life and there are a number of propriatary componients to this hardware that just down not play well with "FLOSS" deployments. Ie keeping up to date often means loosing propriatary functionality or control for a while.

I see they are finally making progress on integrating more of the hardware into the software ( IE partitioning is kindof working ). But for the most part I spend 3x the time managing the IBM hardware then real commodity hardware like dell's. With commodity hardware I can find better documentation, better written toolchains ( free toolclains that can be altered ). With IBM's I have to reverse engeneer how the software works just to figure out why it stoped working.

Overall it's just an odd fit. IBM is trying to commodidize the OS so they don't have to worry about it, but the problem with that is it leads to the result that commodity hardware is better supported, not what IBM is selling! So the more they push Linux the more we are moving away from IBM hardware and moving to true commodity hardware like Dell's ( at less than half the price per CPU ). IBM hardware may be reliable, but st some point it's just not worth 2x or more of the price.

Re:IBM and Linux

[tweek]

That's actually opposite of what we're doing. Because of IBM Linux support, we buy pretty much nothing but IBM hardware. And it all runs Linux save 3 MS Sql servers for Navision and our pSeries boxes (p520 and dual-CEC p570).

IBM hardware works very well with Linux except for the occasional ASM driver screw up but it doesn't take the whole box down.

There WAS that write-through cache mode bug on our EXP400 but we fixed that pretty quickly.

Re:IBM and Linux

[davidkv]

What kind of hardware are you using? I'm running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Red Hat certified IBM servers, and I'm quite happy.

Re:IBM and Linux

[mpcooke3]

I can see what you are saying, but I guess you know why?

Here is the IBM stack.

1. IBM hardware.
2. Linux/AIX OS
3. Java VM
5. Enterprise Application Platform + dev tools
6. Custom Development and Consultancy.

Only steps 5 and 6 make IBM money.
IBM wants hardware to be cheap and plentiful and run Linux but mainly stable enterprise versions like redhat that can be certified.
IBM wants java to be succesful and open and free.
IBM wants the world to use it's development tools and kit so it makes lot's of them free like Eclipse even though it's quite cutting edge.
IBM wishes to sell the very high end enterprise development tools and deployment platforms for $$ and also make a killing in consultancy and support contracts.

The hardware is already cheap and plentiful so they are ditching their own stuff. They are putting money into linux to make sure it becomes the server platform of choice. They are releasing Java tools like there is no tomorrow and trying to persuade sun to open it up.

It's an odd fit cos IBM used to sell hardware ;)

Re:IBM and Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right - it's an odd fit, and the F/OSS community needs to be very wary of this 'strange bedfellows' strategy.

At the moment everyone's all a-flush with the validation IBM is heaping on Linux ... 100 meeeellion dollarinis! after all. So IBM is the new cool kid on the block, buying its way into the party.

But think about the long haul, willya? IBM isn't doing this out of some altruistic desire to contribute to the community - it's doing this to enhance shareholder value. The time-honored IBM way of enhancing shareholder value (via software) is to produce large, closed source, high maintenance apps which cost a lot to buy and maintain. Then rent armies of IBMers out to those who need that proprietary bloatware maintained. IBM fully expects to collect a usurious return on their initial investment. The cool kid who schmoozed his way into the party with gifts now becomes the hardnosed crack dealer.

So of course IBM is expecting that $100M to turn into $1B or more. But fast-forward to the release of IBM's Linux software - F/OSS community realizes that the apps cost too much and aren't open. So an F/OSS equivalent is produced (if IBM's software is appealing), or the IBM software is left largely unused (if the software is not appealing).

For IBM, it's a net loss in the long run, unless they release software which meets one of two criteria:

a) High-revenue vertical market software which doesn't have enough mass appeal to get F/OSS devs interested in creating an equivalent product.
b) Software too complex for the F/OSS community to produce - yet still appealing to enough people to generate revenue.

IBM's investment in linux is a shorter-term loss to the F/OSS community, because it drives up the cost of linux computng. Basically, the OS is free, but so what? You pay through the nose for the IBM productivity software you need!

Only 100 million?

[SteveX]

IBM committed to spend one billion dollars on Linux in 2002. If they spent all that already, this new $100 million should last what, about four months?

linux installs are easy

[spacepimp]

by easy install do you mean apps afterwards, or to install as an os on the hd? i ask this because i dont think youve tried many different linux installs, they are every bit as easy as windows, if not easier. as for mac, i think macs idea of reducing things to the lowest common denominator relieves the end user/power user of configurabilty or micromanagment. and they are far from (working on virtually every big-vendor box)

Re:linux installs are easy

[Anonymous Coward]

for installing apps, I use Synaptic (Debian Gnome)

Click to refresh available apps
Look through catalogue
Click on app want
Install

Wheee! No trip to the store. No wandering websites and chancing on spyware. No money to be paid. Free updates. Oh it's soooo difficult!

So why does my non-techie wife proselytize Linux on her trips? I certainly don't do it. I just enjoy it.

If you want to do something useful for Linux...

[Nom du Keyboard]

If you want to do something useful for Linux...

...Then port it to the Cell processor ASAP.

Gives a whole new meaning...

[Short Circuit]

...new life, in fact, to... ...IBM-compatible.

IBM supports Notes on WINE

[swillden]

I have the an older version R5 running under wine but wasn't able to install 6.5.1

I'm running 6.5.2 under WINE; works just fine.

Also, until IBM releases a native Linux client, Notes will continue running under WINE. The development team actually tests on WINE and if Notes doesn't run, they track down why and fix it in Notes.

Actually porting Notes to Linux will take a while; in the meantime, IBM makes sure that it runs on Linux via WINE.

(Note: I work for IBM, but I don't speak for IBM, or have any connection to the Notes teams.)

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[metamatic]

Actually porting Notes to Linux will take a while

Actually porting Notes to Linux ain't gonna happen. The legacy codebase is such that it would be prohibitively expensive, or so I was told (as a member of the public) by a product manager a few years back.

What's happening instead is that IBM Lotus Workplace products, the next-generation collaboration products, are getting Domino compatibility and the functionality of the Notes client. The Workplace "rich client" products are built on Eclipse and work natively on Linux (and presumably OS X too).

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[Greyfox]

But they HAD a UNIX version. It was written for AIX and used Motif and sucked much more than Notes normally sucked, but By God it Worked! They dropped support for it about 5 years ago.

Notes never did feel like a real product. It always seemed like some toy someone threw together that got out of hand. Hell the databases STILL need to be packed from time to time! You might not have to manually repack them anymore but every so often a scheduled event will kick off and repack them on the servers, because the format can't balance itself! How '80's is that?!

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[IamTheRealMike]

Also, until IBM releases a native Linux client, Notes will continue running under WINE. The development team actually tests on WINE and if Notes doesn't run, they track down why and fix it in Notes.

They do? This is news to me. I did the compatibility work to make Notes 6.5.1 run on Crossover, and I have a nice big database full of bugs they should feel free to take off my shoulders. Given that when I started the thing wouldn't even load up, I find the idea that they make it run on Wine a little hard to believe.

On the other hand, we do have several IBM employees doing regression testing. Whether they do it on their own time or IBMs is a little hard to figure out, but given IBM has multiple personality disorder with respect to Wine neither would surprise me.

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[swillden]

That's correct; I used the word "port" too loosely.

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[metamatic]

The UNIX version of Notes 4 wasn't developed by Lotus; it was farmed out to an independent company. They apparently did a wretched job, and it wasn't possible to integrate the hacked-upon code into the main codestream, particularly not with all of the changes that had been worked on for R5 in the main codebase. (Remember that R5 was a major release with massive internal changes, such as a completely new database engine and full text search engine.)

Most databases don't immediately repack the data store to consolidate free space or rebalance trees with every transaction; there's nothing 80s about that. It's a standard technique for increasing performance.

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[niks42]

We could always put another Citrix farm in, and run the Notes client on that .. and we could also run Internet Explorer on it for those dang stupid applications (like CRM Siebel) that require IE instead of a standards compliant browser ..

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[alan_dershowitz]

There's already Lotus Notes client for OS X, and a cursory look at it would indicate that it's a port. I would have thought that would have gone a long way toward porting Lotus Notes to Linux, if they were careful. The Notes UI appears to be built on it's own toolkit, so that would have to help too. This is really too bad. Between Notes and Visio, if they were supported native in Linux, I could switch :-(

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[metamatic]

There's already Lotus Notes client for OS X, and a cursory look at it would indicate that it's a port. I would have thought that would have gone a long way toward porting Lotus Notes to Linux, if they were careful.

Notes for the Mac is a Carbon application. It doesn't use any of the UNIX APIs, it's all written to the old Macintosh APIs. Hence the existence of a Notes for Mac codebase provides zero help porting to Linux. In fact, it's probably easier to port Windows code to Linux than classic Mac code...

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[d1v1d3byz3r0]

Good luck getting Visio natively ported to Linux. However, feature development for Visio has slowed down quite a bit. Is there even a difference between Visio 2002 and Visio 2003? There are a number of promising modelling tools available for Linux. It's only a matter of time before one of them surpasses Visio in features and ease-of-use.

Re:IBM supports Notes on WINE

[autiger]

The reason they dropped the UNIX clients was because Windows became the dominant desktop and everyone was pounding them for the interface not being Windows-standard enough - so Lotus/IBM was damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

As for compacting; Notes/Domino actually does re-use white space in the database. Sorry if it's not efficient enough for your tastes. But the truth is the product was never intended to appeal to techy geeks, it was designed to make collaboration easy and productive in the lines of business.

KDE

[gilesjuk]

Forget Ubuntu if you like KDE, it's not strictly supported.

It does appear to be a nice distro for Gnome lovers. I prefer a more neutral distro.

Hmmmmm

[PhotoGuy]

I haven't checked the reports, and done the math, but this strikes me as a small committment on the scales of comapny we're talking about; along the lines of the % of Gate's wealth that goes to charity (although I'm sure it's not that small; and even that he gets to write off, for giving windows licenses to schools to further hedge his empire; I guess in absolute terms, no one can knock his contributions to world causes, but I'd like to think if I had billions, I'd give half or most of it to good causes, how much does one person/family/empire need?)

Anyhow, back to the article at hand; 100m for IBM doesn't seem like a stunning amount to me. Can someone put it in perspective?

Re:Hmmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

For opensource developement $100M is like a fox shitting over a cliff...a little bits (and bytes) goes a long way!

But is it enough?

[hcdejong]

$33M a year may seem like a lot, but compared to what Apple and Microsoft spend on OS R&D (both OS X and Windows have had billions poured into them to date) it's peanuts. Now IBM won't have to fund development of the entire OS, but if they're aiming to develop a Linux that can compete on the desktop, they've got their work cut out for them.

Well, let us hope they...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Develop a solid, consitent, good-looking GUI/Windowing-system to run on top of the Linux kernel because what we have right now sucks donkey balls!

Apple did it for BSD, why can't IBM do it for Linux?

Once that's done, invest some more money to produce some good desktop applications, because what we have now also sucks donkey balls at the moment (sorry - no time for the appoligists - it just does!).

IBM really could make Linux an alternative to Windows where it counts (on the corporate desktop).

Sadly, IBM is not the force it once was (since late 1980s), and the almost always fail. Their rollcall of failure is endless since then.

Ok, feel free to mod this troll or flamebait but please just think about it.

Kde P4?

[nurb432]

Im sure many wont agree.

I have an older PIII 700, 256MB ram.. Running BSD + kde 3.3

Works fine.. XP would be dismal on the same hardware.

Re:Kde P4?

[dokebi]

I have an even older PII 266 running on 192MB of RAM. KDE is really slow. So is Gnome. On Slackware. Fedora or Suse is impossible. Windows 2000, however, runs acceptably well so I use that. It even gets security updates (for now).

It used to be that linux was great running on old hardware. But now they are not. What is my alternative besides Windows 2000?

Re:Kde P4?

[jargoone]

What is my alternative besides Windows 2000?

Gosh, I don't know... maybe one of the dozen or so lightweight window managers in existence?

Re:Kde P4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine.. XP would be dismal on the same hardware.

Whatever, troll.

Re:Kde P4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora or Suse is impossible. Windows 2000, however, runs acceptably well so I use that.

So I assume you're comparing against the 2000 versions of Red Hat and SuSE? Oh, you're not? Well, then, your argument is useless.

Re:Kde P4?

[Jason Hood]

KDE 3.4 runs fine on a PPro200 with 192MB of RAM here; if you turn off the eye candy. Also use pre-emption. Make sure DRM is enabled and working. That is plenty of power to run KDE with several UI enchancements.

Re:Kde P4?

[jayed_99]

XP would be dismal on the same hardware

Actually, I hate to disappoint you (really, I'm a FreeBSD user, this is going to be my one pro-Microsoft post of the year).

My girlfriend's machine is a PIII-800 with 192Mb of RAM and a GeForce3. Windows XP Home is pretty damned snappy on it. I relentlessly maintain it so there's no spyware or viruses.

I'm sure any of the latest and greatest games would crush it, but the original Half-Life runs smoothly. So does Firefox.

Re:Kde P4?

[XMyth]

WindowsMaker, or XFCE.

Re:Kde P4?

[XMyth]

WindowMaker I mean. Stupid me.

Re:Kde P4?

[ThisIsFred]

Yes, but a 256MB memory upgrade would be the difference between dismal and dandy. It's not like PC100 is expensive.

Re:Kde P4?

[nurb432]

No, ive tried to run XP on the SAME machine ( dual boot.. since Wine isnt worth a damn for BSD )

It was terrible... Had to go back to 2000.

The Bsd/kde side is still more responsive.

Re:Kde P4?

[legirons]

"I have an older PIII 700, 256MB ram.. Running BSD + kde 3.3, Works fine.. XP would be dismal on the same hardware."

My machine is almost identical but with 124MB RAM (wouldn't call it "old"), and KDE is so much slower that I ended up using WindowMaker exclusively. Window98 also runs fine.

Re:Kde P4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine.. XP would be dismal on the same hardware.

Nice one, Mr. Troll.

Re:Kde P4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 128 MB of ram and a 700mhz celeron on my laptop, and me and XP are running just fine. I dont plan on upgrading for a looong time. (Well, long time being defined as long as I can hold out from being seduced by multicore athlon 64's)

Nice try.

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

we sure as hell don't need to call it gnu/linux, because most of the software isn't gnu. I'm all for open-source software,but i just love how all the software libre fucks want to take credit for everyone else's work

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I belive we should all get past trying to retain the geekness of Linux, and focus on getting the common man/woman to use it >>

I disagree. Linux is not a business in itself that needs to grow or proselytize. Linus' own philosophy (and I agree) is to make a system that does what its users want, not to copy someone else or play catch up --which is what "usability" these days usually boils down to. Linux is not about retaining geekiness, it's about continuous improvement according to the values of its users.

If people see merit in it, they will use it. Why make a cheap copy of something else? Personally, I have no problem with my parents retaining their Windows machines. They are content enough.

I find it mind-boggling how everyone seems so keen to tell Linux developers how to spend their time-- focus on usability, focus on one desktop environment, blah blah blah.

Linux is about choice.

MOD DOWN GOATSEX LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't click on the parent's signature!!

This is why I don't like Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

What will happen to IBM AIX??
Will it die like SGI Irix, Sun Solaris, etc.. ?

Isn't Linux supposed to hurt M$ Windows,
instead of UNIces...

Re:This is why I don't like Linux

[SunFan]

IBM still sells AIX, and Solaris is still the biggest selling UNIX by a large margin. What will hurt MS Windows is the evolution of the Linux Desktop. The current Linux Desktops are basically on par with Windows in usability, now what we need are games and business applications. If companies like Intuit were to step off the Windows bandwagon to make their apps portable to GNOME or KDE, that would be a huge win. If they were to do a good port to Java, the could even support Linux, Windows, and Mac OS with minimal additional effort.

Re:This is why I don't like Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackmail is an ugly word. But that is precisely why Intuit and others avoid Linux. Intuit releases software for Linux, and then the next version of Windows features a built-in money manager/checkbook program.

Re:This is why I don't like Linux

[SunFan]

And, when Microsoft falls from #1, Intuit falls with them. This guarantees Intuit a future of about ten years at the size they are now, IMO. Businesses that think only ten years out aren't doing their job properly for their customers and share holders. Personal finance certainly won't go away in ten years. This means Intuit is leaving Linux open for competitors, for the only reason of keeping Microsoft happy.

money?

[TheAdventurer]

How is IBM going to make money off of Linux?

Re:money?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM sells hardware, not software. By investing in Linux they can sell their $10k or $100k systems without involving microsoft and they can support their customers in a way that they couldn't if they depended on microsoft to fix bugs

Re:money?

[d1v1d3byz3r0]

They're going to move their customers off of x86, that's how. Linux provides the user with freedom of architecture. So, when it comes time to switch from x86 to PowerPC, migrating from the Windows environment is one less thing that their customer has to worry about.

Why doesn't IBM invest in BSD also ?

[zymano]

Can someone please answer me here. I know Ibm wants there hardware to be compatible with linux but why not with the servers that use BSD also ?

Isn't BSD more secure ,especially openbsd ?

Why choose just one os ?

Support all popular open source operating systems.

Re:Why doesn't IBM invest in BSD also ?

[swv3752]

It is the Licence, stupid.

Some could come along and take the BSD changes, incorporate into a closed project and then change things a little so things are not compatible the open project.

Sure noone would ever do that. Kerberos

At least with linux and other GPL stuff noonecan close off any changes.

Re:Why doesn't IBM invest in BSD also ?

[Elranzer]

Some could come along and take the BSD changes, incorporate into a closed project and then change things a little so things are not compatible the open project.

OS X, anyone?

Re:Why doesn't IBM invest in BSD also ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it is the Licence, Retard.

Some could come along and make the GPL changes, incorporate into a closed project and then change things a little so things are not compatible with the open project.

Sure, noone would ever do that: Binary Drivers.

At least with GNU/Linux and other GPL stuff anyone can close off changes.

Why IBM doesn't invest in BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Because any technology they place in BSD code can be taken without their consent by their competitors and IBM get no technology in return.

A simplistic response, but gets most of the reason out there succinctly

Re:Minix

[Jane_Dozey]

Minix is an OS built for teaching people about OS design. AFAIK Andrew Tananbaum doesn't WANT it developed into an enterprise OS so what's the point in throwing money at developing it towards this? If you want to make fixes and so on, go ahead and submit them to it's maintainer but I don't think Minix needs or wants a whole lot of development cash.

IBM does Linux?

[rcamans]

Oh, god, remember what they did for OS/2?
Please say it ain't so, don't let them touch Linux!

heh heh

Re:IBM does Linux?

[Bri3D]

What they did for OS/2 was great. The demise of that OS was due almost entirely to M$ seeing it cutting into sales and pulling out. I think the he heh indicated a joke. I sure hope so..

It's just an advert for IBM's Workplace software.

[Alkarismi]

If anyone can be bothered to RTFA, you will find this is simply IBM playing with smoke and mirrors again...

Classic example from TFA:

"will add Linux-based elements to IBM's Workplace software."

It's just a big advert for yet another proprietary IBM product with some good old Linux magic pixie dust sprinkled over it.

Looks like they're already getting good value for their $100m worth of *advertising*... Gushing enthusiasm from the BBC is worth its weight in gold ;-)

Those of us *actually* promoting pure Open Source solutions would love some free publicity like this !

We is like Volkswagen, an' junk.

[smittyoneeach]

Drivers Wanted.

wireless

video

printer Hooks a bruthuh up! Profit!

Does this mean

[PickyH3D]

That their own tech support people (Read: Help Desk) will support Linux issues?

They must love nerds doing all their work for free, and then when they dump 5% of what they make in a year on just Linux into the market over 3 years everyone thinks they love the community. What an awesome business model.

They maybe should...

[Anonymous Coward]

...spend some of those money on converting their own desktop software to Linux... I can't understand why they can't convert Lotus Notes Client to Linux... they have just converted it to Mac OS X... and they are NOT happy when one tell them that they allready have done at least 50% of the work...

Debian for Enterprise

[Greyfox]

The problem (Inasmuch as Debian has a problem) is that corporations can't just run apt-get off Debian's site every night or so. They want to test the updated packages against their builds and make sure that nothing breaks all the desktop users at once.

Now this isn't so much of a problem when you think about it. Just set up all your systems to point at IT's dist servers instead of Debian's. Not a big deal really, but I haven't seen a process for it. Automated update is just something corporations don't typically DO. I reckon there'd be some amount of testing that IT would want to do against new packages and there might be places where they want to fork from Debian's standard build.

Overall I think it could take more resources that a lot of companies would initially be willing to invest, but it would save everyone some pain and suffering in the long run.

booooooring

[ignavusincognitus]

"If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy."

From a recent jwz rant on a different (but relevant) project

Or...

[Greyfox]

They could just jettison Notes and move to a IMAP and Java Webapp type environment, like Sun has. I've seen both environments in actions and I don't believe Notes is crucial to any business operations. For anything that IS critical that they don't feel like replacing, they could run those as webapps with Domino.

Re:Or...

[d1v1d3byz3r0]

The problem here is that some companies (some Fotune 500s, in fact) have built their entire intranets in Lotus Notes using proprietary languages like Formula or LotusScript. The interfaces for these applications don't necessarily translate easily to HTML. So dropping support for all this legacy stuff causes several political problems. That being said, I think it does make sense for Lotus to develop a linux-based Notes client. I've gotten Notes to work under WINE, but I feel so dirty everytime I launch it that way.

Learn from your mistakes!!

[sleighb0y]

$100M eh? I bet that could buy a lot of spray-on chalk. I wonder how much community service you can rack up for $100M...

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

One could just as easily call the system "GNU" without specifying the kernel. It would help to balance out the people who just call it "linux". Like the way feminists bounce randomly between using "he" or "she" as neutral instead of saying "he/she" every time.

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[Anita Coney]

The problem with just calling it GNU is that the GNU CAN exist independently from Linux. However, Linux CANNOT exist independently from the GNU. So if you think about it, calling it GNU-Linux is actually redundant.

IBM already *did* give something back...

[Anonymous Coward]

I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

They already did give back to Linux... They gave us JFS and all the other kernel stuff that SCO is trying to claim is theirs.

Then how about some thinkpad drivers?

[TrdrJoe]

IBM has been saying this for a long time, but I still haven't been able to go to their website and download linux drivers or tools for my thinkpad hardware.

A search on the website for T30 drivers with linux gives only 9 hits. Some of them are XP drivers and the rest are general tools like bios updates, etc.

granted, everything works with generic drivers, but writing a doc to suggest which generic drivers or how to configure, for example, their dual-head video card (nice feature) is the least they could do.

IBM buy Linux distro...

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they wanted to, then they should just buy any all of the following:

Xandros
Lycoris
ELX

Why on earth would they want to do that? They will buy Novell (who owns SuSE - the best Linux distro out there) instead, if they buy any other Linux company at all.

Re:IBM buy Linux distro...

[gelfling]

For the front end user autoinstall and config goodness. ELX is EH based at any rate. Xandros is the old Redmond Linux (aka it looks like Windows) and Lycoris has a pretty good customer service model.

Another place to use the funds?

[eruanno]

What I'd like to see is more funding for better computer science and technology programs and even scholarships for students! Especially scholarships! You could send a lot of kids to school and help improve a lot of programs to be more linux centric and raise a generation of linux savvy grads with that kind of money.

IBM-Compatible PC

[krunk4ever]

an IBM-Compatible PC would no longer mean a computer running DOS or Windows, but Linux!

I remember back in the days when asked what type of computer you had was either an Apple or IBM-Compatible.

IBM is a visionary company

[MicroBerto]

IBM is absolutely amazing lately, and this goes beyond Linux. IBM is making an absolutely enormous push into consulting - especially business consulting. They're doing incredibly well with it, and they're hiring great talent to do it.

Compare IBM to HP. IBM going with consulting-based strategies, HP going with low margin, shitty ass PCs and re-branded iPods.

Embrace IBM. If their Linux push works, and they continue to grow their consulting business -- watch when they merge the two powers. It will be monstrous.

Re:IBM is a visionary company

[niks42]

IBM is a collection of individuals, no more than that. For which company individuals work, is a series of personal choices. After the instability in the industry of the past few years, key individuals who can make a difference to this extraordinary industry are still working at IBM, and there are some huge strides taking place there. However, there is a catch. IBM is run by accountants these days. They are working hard to cost-reduce the corporation using all those techniques that every other company with global reach is doing; offshoring, outsourcing, getting rid of long-serving skilled people with high salaries and experience, replacing them with cheap, young, less experienced people; divesting the company of its less profitable parts, selling crown jewels for short term gains. Accountants are not capable of looking at a talent pool and seeing the real value there. I don't know why - its something in the genes. The time is here now where the economic recovery, post 9/11 has begun. Competitors to IBM are luring key skills away with higher salaries - Accenture, EDS, CSC, Cap Gemini ... IBM will cease to be special in about 18 months.

This is what Linux has been waiting for!

[L1nux_L0ser83]

This is great news! Big Brother is finally going to push linux and becuase of that linux now has a fighting chance to really over take windows. Linux has been needing a push like this for a while. Its a great OS for the tech savy. But now with IBM backing its usage, this may be the first step towards standardizing linux to become more user friendly and accepted by the business community. Lets face it, in order for linux to really meet its true potential to be the most used and versitile OS it must be accepted by Corporate America before it will ever be accepted in every home. The time is near where linux will finally prove to be a stepping stone into the future of civilization and computing instead of windows which at this point is still extreamly limited.

IBM mean business

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is more suitable for corporate IT centers. Linux provides Oracle, ERP, DB2, zSeries, mainframes, hotswapping, failsafe redundancy, scalable processing, NUMA MP, and so much more. This stuff is here on Linux today.

In the context of a corporate data center, BSD has nothing to offer. BSD doesn't have the needed technology.

Re:cash injection will be used to help its custome

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to spend money to make money.

They could start....

[simontek2]

by stopping by my store The Open Store www.theopenstore.net Its a store dedicated to Linux, here in Savannah, GA

not peculiar to ebuilds

[MenTaLguY]

The files the ebuild grabs do not have to be grabbed from a central server (many are not), and if I want to add a package, I can. That's why Gentoo has an ebuild for NVidia drivers, VMWare, and JEdit. Whereas Debian has none of these. RPM based distros have similar problems. Ebuilds don't even have to break EULAs - you can program the ebuild to download the files from the owner's site, so there is no issue of distribution right infringement.

There's nothing stopping similar things from being done with Debian as well -- and sometimes they are; c.f. the existing Debian packages for the MS corefonts and Macromedia's Flash player plugin. It's just that Debian usually doesn't choose to do things that way.

Please IBM, make better development tools.

[Austin Milbarge]

Hopefully IBM will use part of it's $$$ to develop a serious development environment that will ultimately entice VB/C# developers to make the switch. Or at least, feel comfortable by letting them get down to developing a computer program rather than mess with installing 7,000 libraries only to find out that IDE version 1.0.3 needs library version 1.9.2.89.3, rather than 1.9.2.89.2!! I'm sure all you developers out there know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. vi, emacs and friends just are just too antiquated for serious GUI development. If Linux were to even approach what Microsoft has in the desktop world, It's going to need quality development tools because current open source tools suck royally and are too irritating to use.

Re:Please IBM, make better development tools.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they're being wise in their approach to IDE's; it's similar to their strategy towards Linux. Rational Application Developer(WSAD) is a bunch of eclipse plugins. Why build an IDE when there is a great one out there you can extend and make money on?

Re:Please IBM, make better development tools.

[d1v1d3byz3r0]

Ahem... http://www.eclipse.org

duuno, but it seems obvious why not

[zogger]

IBM doesn't have their own (readily apparent) brand of consumer grade ridiculously simple and cast iron linux to push. Well, because it don't exist is one reason. And they got out of the consumer PC business because they think it sucks profit to headache wise. They don't really need to advertise on TV the same way Dell does for instance to reach corporate customers who buy things in bulk and for upscale amounts of dollars. Now IF they had reemphasized their own PCs and made a major effort to keep pushing them, then yes, it would make sense then to have their own software, at least to try it again, but they got burned before in that market. That they do now makes them money when it's for a million buck sale (something like that), it loses them money bigtime when it's for every other hoo-man out there would maybe have a problem and need support, etc. At a corporate level at least they have a headstart that whomever they have to deal with at least is in a professional position and should know the bare minimum of "computing stuff", homeowners, nope, you can't even assume that bare minimum. They tried it with WARP and it failed it, so there ya go. Heck, I don't even like trying to provide tech support to ME for that matter, I ask too many stoopid questions of myself..."self, you know you need to do this "tweak this file and write some simple *script* thing nonsense,you read it on the linux intarweb, so which one and howtodothat and...". It's got to be a bear over the phone with a stranger who still don't know the difference between a browser and the OS and their ISP account...to a lot of people,millions of them out there right now, who all get computers and try to use them, those are still the *same things* in their minds.

Troll?

[nurb432]

Im saying this out of experience.

XP needs more resources, its pretty simple. It wasnt a 'troll' against XP in general, only that it takes more resources to be as responsive.

Of course if you get a brand new machine, its a wash as the machine has more then enough to do both with extra to spare.

So you can take your attitude, and your useless, incorrect observation and shove it.

Re:Troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

okay,

1. My text box for winblows is a 700mhz p3 with 256 MB. It runs XP just fine and is used often.

2. YMMV

3. When you write things about XP that are simply NOT TRUE (for everyone), your case loses credibility.

Thus, your post is a troll. Apologies for the attitude. :p

Re:Troll?

[nurb432]

For ME on what I have, the performance of XP is dismal, while FBSd + KDE is quite useable...

If you noticed, i did mention that W2K was acceptable, so i dont think that would qualify me as a anti windows troll...

Oh, and just to make if fair, i also had debian installed at one point, and it was somewehre in the middle..

If what you have works at an acceptable point for you, more power to you.. It just doesnt work out for me here on my hardware..

Strategic Business Plan

[jgold03]

I think they are trying to put pressure on Microsoft, who makes products that are very Microsoft-only and Intel-only.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

We're already doing that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Embedded, servers, all that is already being done.

What they need to do is to pay to improve programs that everyone uses, like Xine, Gqview, Mozilla, MUTE, etc..

Even better, pay to have those ported to windows so people will get used to them and the changeover to Linux will be easy for them.

It's just economics for IBM

[hrm]

About two weeks ago, IBM senior vice president and director of research Paul Horn gave an invited talk at my company as part of a research stategy planning thing.

He got to talking about the use of open source in general and Linux in particular. He says it costs IBM about 500 million dollars each year to keep something like AIX up-to-date and relevant. At a lower cost (but by no means negligble) they can invest in Linux to make it work for them like AIX. He hinted that that cost is about 100-200 million dollars annually.

The fact that society benefits from IBM's improvements of Linux may gave the people at IBM a nice warm feeling, but the financial people get a much better feeling from the fact that the combined world's efforts in creating an OS suite together saves them about 300-400 million a year.

How do you support when you can't even link here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want you to support me? You don't even know how to make your like clickable here on slashdot.

Learn HTML and then maybe you might actually be able to support someone.

same to you!

[temojen]

Proper haiku form
includes seasonal reference
and surprise ending

Put $100 a month on a FTP server for updates!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just put up a IBM ftp server that mirrors all the RPM's needed so everyone could just point to the IBM server and we can get simple installs?

try one of the...

[zogger]

...mini distros that have just enough and no more. Like feather or puppy or damnsmall or austrumi, which is my current favorite of the "small is beautiful" scene. They work well on older stuff. Austrumi in particular I think is well laid out and a nice selection of apps. Pretty boot up screen as well, frosting as it were.

With that said, I have FC2 with gnome desktop running fine on my PP200 with 224 megs RAM,this is my daily driver, and I could see as I added more RAM to the original factory config of 32 megs how linux got much better, I think at half a gig (don't know, just guessing really) is probably a very sweet spot if that is possible on your old machine, then maybe don't even use a swap partition at all. Mine was still a dog at 96, but that extra stick of 128 did the trick.

Yes

[xeno-cat]

No mod points to bump your comment, but this hits the nail on the head. IBM makes it's money via IBM Global Services. They are using Linux to create a standard platform on which they can compete where they really shine, i.e. massive development projects.

What IBM does not want is for Microsoft to gain a foothold in the services market and put IBM at a disadvantage because everyone is using MS products.

I think that the timing is right and that IBM may just pull this off before MS figures out that IBM destroying Windows is just a byproduct of IBM protecting it's core services.

(not to mention that MS pissed off an elephant awhile back and elephants _never_ forget!)

Kind Regards

Oh. Okay, then.

[cduffy]

As the cool wind blows,
education comes to one
gaijin programmer.

Silly is that wind --
though it tries and tries again,
office walls protect.

they did it because of the letter i wrote them

[Anonymous Coward]

and they already put 150M into SuSE

and they already gave plenty to computing
(mainfrmaes, circa 1970?)

i like ibm. ibm likes me.

PS
BURN! Microsoft! BURN!

Re:linux installs are easy - No they are not

[softcoder]

I sysadmin Solaris boxes at work, so I am not totally clueless when it comes to Linux. But Linux installs are definitely not easy. And installing apps afterwards is even worse.
Here is what Fedora Core 3 did NOT do when I tried to install it last week.
1) Boot from the CD. (RH 6.0 CD, & Knoppix CD boot fine) (No error message from FC3 either.)
2) Detect the LAN card. (Had to modprobe the correct module)
3) There was a documented and fixed bug in the X.org server that crashed the install till I changed the graphics card. FC3 did not include the fixed version of X.org for some reason. Again Knoppix and RH 6 had no trouble with the card. (Using an older version of XFree)
4) Detect the sound card. Had to modprobe etc.
5) Play a CD, or give a hint. (Had to open the CPU and connect up the Analog audio cable).
6) Preserve my previous partitions. MDK tells me that it needs to reformat swap and / but it will let me keep /home. FC3 blows everything away.
Lest you think FC3 is unique in this regard it isn't. MDK 10.1 was a lilttle better (it detected the LAN card) but otherwise experienced exactly the same problems.
I haven't even tried digital cameras, network printing, Samba access to my Windows machines, or the scanner yet. Any bets on how smoothly THAT will go?

Re:Shouldn't we be calling it Gnu-Linux?

[d1v1d3byz3r0]

It's mostly a political and philosophical thing. Richard Stallman never finished Hurd, so he wants the operating system that took advantage of the Gnu tools to champion the Gnu philosophy in its name in the way that Hurd never could.

IBM Linux

[null-sRc]

Why don't they just put 100 million towards a new distro .. IBM Linux ...

look what apple did with BSD.. imagine what IBM can do with linux !!

Even if they sold it for close to what windows is selling for, I'm sure people will welcome the switch of vendors.. especially with a name like IBM backing it.

ViaVoice???

[frickenhell]

ViaVoice was a speech recognition software for Linux from IBM. It worked. A few projects were reliant on its availability.

So where did it go?

They shut it down. It is now only available on the Mandrake 8.0 powerpack CDs.

LOL WHAT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but dosent it depend more on RAM then CPU.

Re:LOL WHAT

[InfiniteWisdom]

You need to look up the term "joke" sometime

Re:LOL WHAT

[mattyrobinson69]

I suppose it does, but it is configurable to turn the eyecandy down so much that its usable on a Pentium-MMX 233.

I wouldn't know about the memory because my gf had 128+32mb in it

LOL WHAT

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense but if U payed those $699 Ure a ligitimite maroon..............