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Linuxcare Reincarnated as Levanta

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the digging-out-a-classic-icon dept.

ches_grin writes "BusinessWeek is running a nice profile on Levanta, the former dot-com poster child once known as Linuxcare. From the article: 'It's not that Matt Mosman has an easy job. As Linux continues its march deeper into Corporate America's racks and racks of servers, his small Silicon Valley company, Levanta, is one of many trying to help companies install and manage all those servers--a big, complex problem that's not being solved very well right now. Still, Mosman has one thing going for him: He can't do much worse than his predecessors.'"

9 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. but what we all really want to know is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...does Ceren Ercen still work there?!

    1. Re:but what we all really want to know is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I heard they fired her and replaced her with someone who was actually good looking.

  2. Jesus. by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This happens quite often, and I'm always scratching my head, why would they take a perfictly reasonable and understandable company name and "synergize" it in to something stupid. Case in point, "Linuxcare" changed to "Levanta". I would avoid them based on that stupidity alone.

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    1. Re:Jesus. by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Well, there's probably a few reasons in this case.

      1. They don't want to get sued by Linus over the use of the 'Linux trademark.
      2. They don't want to get pigeonholed into doing just 'Linux' support. They're probably already doing some level of application support, and they might want to expand into *BSD, OpenSolaris, etc. later.
      3. To a suit, 'Levanta' probably just sounds cooler than 'LinuxCare.' LinuxCare sounds utilitarian, while 'Levanta' sounds like it could be the next acid blocker medication, right along side Nexium, Zantac, Pecid and Tazac.

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  3. Lowest price for Levanta! by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't let Levanta's nondescript, prescription drug-sounding name fool you

    Glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought I'd be getting spams saying: L3van7a at l0w lovv pr1ce5

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    This guy's the limit!
  4. How it works by ThinkingInBinary · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For those who, like me, are wondering about how the Levanta Intrepid (the actual box) can remotely manage servers with such "precision"... I looked it up on their website.

    Basically, all of the servers that are managed by the Intrepid are set up to network boot, and use network disks. So the Intrepid controls the kernel they boot with and their filesystems. This gives it the ability to install or uninstall software behind-the-scenes, as well as make byte-level backups of servers and transition them to other machines (simply by switching around which server boots to which disk).

    To me, at least, this seems quite clever.

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    ttuttle is a rankmaniac
  5. Re:It's a good name by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please contact your sysadmin if your computer stays up for longer than 48 hours.

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    This guy's the limit!
  6. Someone please refresh our memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    LinuxCare had a very colorful history, with VCs installing people with known fraud backgrounds as CXO level execs only to later have him sexaully assault guys working there (where further digging revealed that they had been accused of this in the past) and contributing greatly to the company's death due to calling in of favors he owed other companies. I hear they made some of their employees use Windows software (requiring a second computer) as one of those deals


    If LinuxCare left any mark on the world, tt's a poster child of bad-behavior of VCs and the importance of founders keeping in control when negotiating with them.


    Someone with a clearer memory than me, and hopefully references, please fill in the details.

  7. I used to work for LinuxCare... by ezrec · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used to work for LinuxCare, from January 2000 to Sept 2003. I have to say, to was a wild ride. At the 'LinuxCare' phase, I mostly did contract work to write Linux device drivers for 3rd parties. (Including some absolutely evil stuff like a C++ stub for kernel modules, and a 'look like NT' wrapper for a MPEG encoder kernel module.) In early 2000, we moved into our 'new' offices (we took up the entire basement of the huge converted warehouse building we were in), and had 'The Worlds Ugliest Mural' done by a local graffiti artist. The entire floor was carpeded with the LinuxCare 'X' logo. Yes, custom logo carpet. Around 2001, the support business collapsed. The Founders left, except for Art, but we picked up a new CEO, some really smart IBM guys, and started working on what was to be the Levanta project. Originally targeted for IBM z/390 mainframes, it used the z/VM operating system to provide multiple 'on-demand' Linux-on-390 'partitions'. (z/VM is the mainframe equivalent to VMWare, but 20 years old !) Akmal Khan came on board after Levanta was in full swing, and immediately took a dislike to the the distributed nature of our development group. There was Pittsburgh, doing the primary backend database; Ottawa was doing the web GUI and z/VM interface; Las Vegas handled the web infrastructure; project management in Atlanta; and San Francisco was sales and marketing. Except for SF and Ottawa, most sites telecommuted, so no 'office overhead' for those areas. It became apparent pretty quickly that Akmal was the micromanaging type. By spring 2003, A.K. had collected his own group of technical people (very good ones, by the way) in SF, diverted all development of 'Levanta-on-Intel' to SF, and started making it pretty clear to the managers that all sites except SF would be going away. That fall of 2003, the axe arrived for Ottawa, and I walked away from Levanta and the political mess that had developed. I'm glad to have worked for LinuxCare, and had a ton-of-fun working on Levanta-on-z/390.