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Novell Gets $348 Million From Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes, "Novell has published additional details about its agreements with Microsoft concerning Windows and Linux interoperability and patents. It seems the company is receiving an up-front payment of $348 million from Microsoft, for SLES subscription certificates and for patent cross-licensing. Microsoft will make an upfront payment to Novell of $240 million for SLES subscription 'certificates' that Microsoft can use, resell, or distribute over the term of the agreement. Regarding the patent cooperation agreement, Microsoft will make an up-front net payment to Novell of $108 million, and Novell will make ongoing payments totaling at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft."
Go for it, guys.
Microsoft Vader: How much is your soul?
Novell Spaceballs Skywalker: $380 million and change, and we'll throw in SuSE.
Microsoft Vader: You fool! We would have paid you 10x as much.
As scary as this initially sounds (Microsoft Linux anyone?), the partnership makes sense. Microsoft gains the capability to run Linux better in a virtualized environment (or vice versa), and Novell gets a ton of much needed cash. For years, it's been obvious that at some point Microsoft would have to start recognizing the fast growth of Linux as an enterprise platform, and it appears that this move is Microsoft's first step.
The only concern I have is that Microsot continues further down the path and begins to create closed source applications or kernel modules specifically to run Microsoft apps. If they can swing this, the potential for degradation of the upward Linux momentum is high. John Dvorak of PC Magazine figures that Microsoft will develop GPL work-arounds, and eventually begin releasing Linux apps.
What then? Mac servers for everyone?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
is $348 million. How do you call it? Inflation!
Something seems fishy here.
And its not the corporate sushi bar, or koi pond.
Or that nasty intern on the fourth floor.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Read the press release, it is not a patent deal, that would put them in violation of the GPL. Instead it is a conenant not to sue.
So if I understand correctly. Microsoft is admitting that their software violates some of Novell's patents.
However, instead of protecting themselves and their customers by doing a cross licensing deal with Novell, Microsoft is keeping themselves and their customers at risk by entering into a non binding revocable 'covenant ' instead.
I wonder how well this will sit Microsoft's shareholders knowing that this risk exists and it is not being addressed permanently when such an option exists.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
"Under the patent cooperation agreement, Novell's customers receive directly from Microsoft a covenant not to sue. Novell does not receive a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft, and we have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Our agreement does not affect the freedom that Novell or anyone else in the open source community, including developers, has under the GPL and does not impose any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL. Therefore, the agreement is fully compliant with the GPL,"
If the answer is war, you are asking the wrong question
Bill: "I'm worried, Steve. We're losing more ground to Linux. It's on the verge of becoming a non-nerd OS."
Steve: "I've got an idea. Let's buy another version of Linux."
Bill: "Are you crazy? The SCO gambit didn't fool anybody."
Steve: "No, not like that. Instead of trying to fool a judge, we'll try to fool our customers."
Bill: "So? That's already company policy."
Steve: "Yes, but we'll release our own version. We tell the public that we're joining the Linux bandwagon, and with our marketing clout, it will soon become the dominant version on the market. Then when the public is convinced that MS-Linux IS Linux, we make gradual changes to turn it into an unusable bloated wreck. Linux will be finished!"
Bill: "No way! Remember, Steve, I used to write software. No self-respecting programmer would deliberately wreck an OS. Where are we going to get a bunch of programmers to do that?"
Steve: "We have all the guys who wrote Vista. I think they could do it."
( Steve exits )
( 10 minutes later, Steve returns, slamming the door quickly behind him. He looks like he has seen a ghost )
Bill: "So, how did it go?
Steve: ( shaking his head ) "Bad, bad, bad, bad, b-"
Bill: Get a grip! What happened?
Steve: "They won't do it...I mean they'll do it, but they want to do it well! They won't wreck it."
Bill: "You explained the plan to them?"
Steve: "Yes, very clearly. Twice. But they just started chanting. One word, over and over and over and over and over and ov-
( Bill picks up a chair, bashes Steve over the head with it. )
Steve: "Wh..? Uh..thanks...I needed that."
( Bill puts down the chair, walks to the door )
Steve: "Nooo! Please don't op-"
( Bill opens the door. From down the hall a chorus of voices can be heard. )
Voices: "-ux! Linux! Linux! Linux! Linux! Linux! Lin-"
( Bill slams the door )
Bill: "That's bad."
Steve: "It's worse. They now refuse to work on Vista any more!"
Bill: "That's ok. We aren't going to support it for very long anyway."
Steve: "So what are we going to do?"
Bill: "I think I can still make the plan work. Listen: we'll let them produce a good version of Linux. We'll make it very good for servers."
Steve: "Suse? You mean we'll take over Novell?"
Bill: "Yes. That gives us a big step up to dominate the Linux market like you suggested. But instead of trying to convice the world that Linux is junk, we'll tell them that Linux is only for servers."
Steve: "But it will migrate to the desktop! We have to kill it!"
Bill: "No, we'll let the guys downstairs make it the way they want it. Keep it for nerds. Each update will be more and more technical. Let them gradually turn it into something that only a Linux pro can use."
Steve: "We're gonna pay them to write Gentoo?"
that this includes a deal to not persue much further the SCO case. While the feds may go after MS for their involvement with the shady deal with SCO, this is probably an early payoff to Novell to drop it. I just wonder if this allows Novell to go after Sun or did MS protect them as well?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Remember when Microsoft gave Apple $3XXM, and the Mac Vs. Windows lawsuits were settled? Chances are that Microsoft is now doing the same with Novell, and Novell still owns some patents for Unix that it did not sell to SCO, and Novell was a major player in the IBM vs. SCO lawsuit. Microsoft is just trying to CYA itself, because obviously Vista infringes on some Unix/Linux patents. This is just a way of Microsoft saying to Novell, we'll give you some money to save your company, like we did to Apple, if you promise not to sue us.
I wonder if there will be a SuSE version of MS-Office, like the OSX version of MS-Office created out of the Microsoft-Apple deal?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
... I guess now we don't like SLES. Shoddy security, I've heard.
Novell is in huge financial trouble. If you read the article, they are trying to negotiate with their major debtors to come to an agreement and continue payments. Wells Fargo and Citibank are calling two of their major loans out against Novell. Also note the rumors of layoffs, investigating other financial mishaps, and the late filings of their earnings. This is what causes many companies to start heading down the tubes. The whole Microsoft agreement is essentially Microsoft cashing in on Novell after they made some financial mistakes and need someone to bail them out of it. Just watch as Microsoft ends up having major influence in the direction of Novell. This isn't a bad thing though. It means there will still be two main players in the Linux Business market. It's Microsoft's way of also creating some feirce competition against Redhat. Not to mention Oracle has their sites on Redhat and are taking shots at them. The whole support agreement with Oracle deal is meant to take out Redhat's major market. With that and a soon to be beefed up financial stability of Novell and push for SLES, Redhat will had some hard roads to go through. It's no surprise that MS sided with Novell when they saw Oracle make their move against Redhat. Interesting times in major Linux vendors are ahead. It should be interesting to see how it all turns out.
Maybe Microsoft thinks that they can gain a significant share of enterprise Linux installations with a distribution they control. Then, they will do their classic embrace and extend to use the leverage to their advantage.
Microsoft knows that no one ever got fired for buying IBM of Microsoft. IBM is pushing Linux and that doesn't help Microsoft. By providing a Microsoft-approved Linux, they can get a slice of the pie and out themselves into a position to do to Linux what they have tried to do with every other standard technology - embrace and extend it.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
I've advised all the Suse users I know and support to do the same thing, right now.
I will no longer be doing any updates to any of the Suse installations I support via Novell.
I'm actively seeking a replacement distro.
The poisoning of the well is under way, get out now while you still can.
We're all getting a little sick and tired of all the 'slashdot playwrights'. If you want to enroll in a local college course, and produce an off broadway production of "The Chair and I" that's great. That's the American Dream. This isn't the place for your dreams. Here I will step on them... like this... and that.
Please keep this in mind, and "Welcome to the world of tomorrow".
Finally, MS will kill you off. You think 380 million is something they'll even NOTICE? In return, lets see, they get.. your source code, YAST, AppArmor, mindshare, and info on your business.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Novell gets to scare people out of Red Hat, and Microsoft only has to compete with Novell in the future.
Sure, Novell claims that the patent issue is not an important part of the deal, but I bet they use it as a selling point.
So, if I use SuSE now, should I switch? Is Novell now evil-by-contact?
If I put on my worst case hat, MS extends SUSE by using it's lisence for things such as MP3 encoders and patents such as it's WMA and WMV formats and include them in SUSE along with IE and Outlook Express. These additions will not be open source. For those with trouble installing things such as the Lame encoder or other codecs to view online content, this could be a no-brainer install. Expect it to only install alongside Windows. (note the dual OS thing mentioned) After people start using it instead of Ubuntu or Fedora and then they die off, expect Linux features to be included in Windows.
Remember the Netscape/IE thing. This may be just a new chapter. Ours works better out of the box. The other is for geeks only and is hard to configure and get all the plug -in's to get it to work.
After the competition is dead, expect the shell of Suse to be discarded while keeping things such as multiple desktops.
Just my thoughts. The money to Novel rings a lot of alarm bells. Follow the money stupid!
The truth shall set you free!
That's something I've seen NOTHING about from Novell since the Microsoft merger, I mean deal.
I've been wondering if the deal is intended to basically, persuade Novell that it doesn't need to be in the desktop space and to slow down the R&D in the desktop area. Perhaps MS actually got nervous when all the articles came out calling SLED10 the "Vista-killer"?
Having reviewed two desktop distros (Lin/freespire and SLED10) for publication lately and I'm working on getting FC6 running (for review? Don't know yet, I'm getting VMware running on it at this point), I'd say that if the driver issue can be dealt with (preferably in a way that doesn't benefit Novell), the next rev of almost any Linux desktop distro will be ready for the unsupported home user assuming the OS is pre-installed by the computer builder. Linux desktops are generally ready for any company that can provide in-house support, but that was true last year.
While Fedora Core has the reputation of being more difficult, one can run one script (Fedora Frog) and install practically all the hard stuff in a couple of hours, starting with multimedia. Note that of the two hours or so, you need to spend about 5 minutes around the computer. Similar scripts are available for other distros. (note: yes, Frog works in FC6, with minor glitches)
Tech Public Policy stuff
Every time I see a statement like this it pisses me off. Linux is very inter operable with every mainstream OS except Windows. And you know what, Windows isn't inter operable with any other OS that exists. Not only that but the Linux community goes to outrageous efforts to make it inter operable with other OS's (reverse engineering) while Microsoft goes to extreme efforts to ensure no OS can inter operate with Windows.
Also why is it I find Linux far simpler than Windows. You set it up and it works forever. On rare occasions that there are problems you can find a definitive solution unlike Windows where you just reboot and pray because no one including Microsoft knows what's happening with most problems.
Who is John Galt?
Heh. Nice troll. You really think Microsoft had to pay $380 million for Suse's source code? If that's what happened then Ron Hovsepian must be have been doubled over laughing all week.
P.S. Yes folks, both YaST and AppArmor are GPL.
Breakfast served all day!
Indeed it is worth 10x as much. But then you have to factor in an extra compensation package for CEO, CFO, CIO, and any other C*O in the company totaling a measly $81 million dollars as a way of saying thanks for putting the Microsoft deal together.
this has anything to do with Microsoft's SCO involvement.
My own personal conspiracy theory is that Novell found something in the MS-SCO deal that the US Attorney General, even under the Bush Administration, would not have liked at all.
Novell is a member of the Open Invention Network. A patent collective that is used to defend certain open source projects (if you sue project X or used of project X for patent infringement than they sue you). Afiak OIN is the reason that mono was included in fedora, because they were able to use it to defend against Microsoft patents.
Thus if Microsoft sues someone for using one of those protected open source projects than OIN sues back.
This brings up two interesting questions. First, since Novell is a member of OIN would they be considered partial owners of these patents and thus in violation of this agreement if OIN sues MS? (I suspect not).
Second. What are the state of OIN's current patents? From the site it looks like OIN itself owns the patents (so they shouldn't lose any defensive power) but my strong suspicion is that Novell wouldn't be allowed to transfer any new patents to OIN since they could be potentially be used to sue MS (and thus in violation of this agreement).
Does anyone know more about these issues and how this agreement might affect OIN?
I stole this Sig
Not only must we put up with grammar nazis and spelling nazis, but now slashdot has a genre nazi?
As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.
Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety.
Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.
But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.
For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.
http://wtogami.livejournal.com/11305.html
Please read more in the original version in this blog entry.
Warren Togami
Founder, Fedora Project
Software Engineer, Red Hat, Inc.
From this page
Since the announcement of the Novell-Microsoft agreement on November 2, we have been flooded with questions from the open source community about what this deal means to the Linux, the open source community, and even what this deal means for Novell. We will use this page to answer as many of those questions as possible. Check back frequently, as we will continue to add more answers as quickly as possible.
Q1. How is this agreement compatible with Novell's obligations under Section 7 of the GPL?
Our agreement with Microsoft is focused on our customers, and does not include a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft to Novell (or, for that matter, from Novell to Microsoft). Novell's customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft. We have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL and we are in full compliance.
Novell's end user customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft for their use of Novell products and services, but these activities are outside the scope of the GPL.
Many more questions are answerd there. The fact that they get some money for their service is nice. Microsoft pays for the update service from Novell. Something that wasn'r free for SLES and SLED anyway. You can still get the SLES and SLED for free.
You will need an activation code FOR THE UPDATES as was always the case. openSUSE will still be available for free
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It couldn't possibly have anything to do that virtually every common OS besides Windows IS a *nix variant? Linux is far simpler than Windows? Yesterday, I reformatted my hard drive. I decided, after 10 years on a Microsoft operating system I would dual boot XP Pro and a generic install of Ubuntu. Reinstalled XP Pro in about 40 minutes, including time spent downloading and installing drivers. To get Ubuntu to install on my machine, I had to manually edit a config file to get the screen to display correctly, but could only do so *after* the Ubuntu installer crashed (like, duh?). I found this out after digging through Ubuntu forum posts for about an hour (there was nothing in the Wiki related to this). I like the idea of moving to open source software, but the reality is it is not as universal or simple as Windows. XP crashes for me (in the last 4 years of using it) have been rare, and when it is it is usually a memory leak from a particular application, not XP itself. So far, every machine I've installed Linux on I've had serious compatibility issues in every case. I'm not trying to install Linux on my alarm clock here, these are every day, very common PC parts. I've yet to have a smooth Linux installation. It's simply not for mom and pop yet.
Maybe he meant interoperability as in it will work with WinXP, which is a very logical argument, and 'every mainstream OS' means it works with.... Linux? :P But really, what is this 'interoperability' you speak of? What exactly does that include, networking? At our university, we have linux and win32 platforms networked and working fine together... So I'm just not sure what you speak of when you say that it's 'inter operable'...
Anyways, the Parent has a point, a very good one. I don't want to reinstall windows let alone switch to a different OS, as the amount of time I have spent catering to this particular install is quite a bit. However, on my media server, I have thought about switching over to a new OS (I have winXP right now, and it's kinda crappy to leave on 24/7). This new... er... frankenSuSE might be the answer, although I probably won't wait that long for it to come out. BUT, businesses might find it appealing, as the IT people can be like 'w00t, we use linux!' but they can go to their employer saying they have the utmost confidence it still works with their Vista workstations...
Har?
Every time I see a statement like this it pisses me off. Linux is very inter operable with every mainstream OS except Windows.
/etc/ memorized, and oh who cares because nobody needs accelerated graphics on Linux because there's no games to play anyway. If the average user (and my install was very average) needs to manually edit config files, then Linux is still failing at being simple to install and use. To your average user these are not small configuration issues, they are glaring *problems* with the software.
I don't think he meant interoperability between operating systems, but rather applications and services. Active Directory integrates seamlessly with Exchange, Group Policy, DNS, all forms of ACLs, and allows easy authentication of Windows users and computers. Exchange connects and works great with Outlook and offers a feature set not yet matched by any open source solution. MS Office applications can simply and quickly communicate and transfer information back and forth. -- The significant thing is that it all just works together.
Also why is it I find Linux far simpler than Windows. You set it up and it works forever.
I know this is Slashdot, and the same discussions are re-hashed in every article about Linux, but this kind of broad sweeping statement needs to DIE.
Linux is not simpler than Windows. You don't simply push a button and suddenly everything works. I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and had to fight a small war to get accelerated graphics working. I had to change the wireless network stuff so it used ndiswrapper instead of whatever it was the installer wanted to use to prevent it from constantly dropping connections.
I'm tired of giving examples just to have them shot down by people who think everybody is a hardware expert, has the contents of
you just reboot and pray
Funny, but I find myself doing this very thing with Linux (what's broken? Is it GDM, Gnome, Nautilus? Did one of the services break? Which one? Ah, screw it, just reboot.)
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Interesting that it involves the exchange of money. This lays the ground work for MS to keep collecting after they sever the agreement with Novell. The agreement runs out in 5 years, but there is a clause in the contract which allows MS to terminate it earlier.
Either way, it tries to fool people into accepting software patents. For the short term, many projects can be moved to European servers, just like when encryption export was illegal in the US. However, in the long term, the US needs to adopt a more common sense approach to patents and revoke any involving intangibles like software, mathematical formulas, and literature. Expression of those is already protected by copyright. What we have now is a broken system which allows restricting ideas.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Microsoft pays Novell $240 million and another $108 million for a total of $348 million. Novell pays Microsoft back $40+ million, so Microsoft is really only paying $308 million.
I don't think he meant interoperability between operating systems, but rather applications and services. Active Directory integrates seamlessly with Exchange, Group Policy, DNS, all forms of ACLs, and allows easy authentication of Windows users and computers. Exchange connects and works great with Outlook and offers a feature set not yet matched by any open source solution. MS Office applications can simply and quickly communicate and transfer information back and forth. -- The significant thing is that it all just works together.
That's because they're all owned and marketed by Microsoft. I suppose that would be more intraoperability as opposed to interoperability.
WHY does anyone assume that IBM is going to save Linux from any sort of patent problem? IBM is like, the god corporation of patents. Honestly, I wish you people would pull your heads out of your nether regions for just one brief moment and realise that it's much more likely that IBM would simply shrug and (if they needed to) switch over to SUSE.
This is about patents; IBM LOVES patents, much more than they like Linux.
Anyone who counts on IBM is a fool, and has forgotten that before microsoft was "M$", IBM was the big evil. It's much, much more likely that IBM will return to their old ways than it is that they'll fight a patent war against MS.
I google "ubuntu nvidia graphics", and this comes up: Unofficial Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Starter Guide.
It comes down to:
1) Add universal repositories in Synaptic package manager.
2) Type this in in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-common
sudo nvidia-glx-config enable
3) Type Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart your display, or reboot if you prefer.
There are guides to the first and second steps too.
If you know Debian derived distros this is, of course, as second nature as a Windows user using the control panel.
If GDM or a service crashes it will restart. If nautilus crashes you can restart it by clicking the Home folder button in the dropdown menu. At least when Nautilus crashes the taskbar doesn't go, along with IE, like it does with explorer.exe which leaves you staring at your wallpaper and hoping it'll start back up.
I don't like Linux fanboys, and I think the recent shifts away from 100% rabid anti-Windows posts are very positive. But I do think Linux is as easy to use for a newcomer as Windows, and it has communities built up around the specific distro you use which offer support for all the common problems.
It's silly to say Linux is hard to use and Windows is easy when you don't use Linux but are experienced with Windows. As far as someone who is completely inexperienced with computers goes I think would find a modern Linux distro just as easy to use as they would Windows.
Personally I find Linux and Windows just as easy to use for browsing the web etc, but when it comes to troubleshooting I find Linux much easier. This doesn't mean Windows is necessarily harder to use, I just know Linux better than Windows.
"Linux is very user friendly, it's just picky about its friends."
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
NTFS-3G has full read-write, open source NTFS support for a few months: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ Fedora Extra, Debian, Ubuntu and many others have it already.
Microsoft is not directly targeting Linux, but rather apps/utilities that might persuade users from switching to it. There are two things that Novell has that Microsoft would want to bury or pollute. Evolution and Xgl. Decent email/collaboration/task management software could help corporate users break away from Outlook; and Xgl makes Aeroglass effects possible on modest hardware. I have a feeling that we'll see these two projects either stagnate (from Novell's end), or newly added features might find themselves getting non GPL code in them. I suggest forking the code on both now.
"Linux is not simpler than Windows. You don't simply push a button and suddenly everything works. I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and had to fight a small war to get accelerated graphics working. I had to change the wireless network stuff so it used ndiswrapper instead of whatever it was the installer wanted to use to prevent it from constantly dropping connections."
I spent my entire yesterday-evening fixing my neighbours computer. She complained that it was "running very slowly". It's a XP-machine, and it had antivirus installed (in fact, several of them). I removed the multitude of antivirus-software (which had expired anyway), installed new antivirus, scanned the machine, scanned it for adware and spyware, the usual stuff. And it did make it a bit better. I also noticed that she only had 256MB of RAM, which is quite little these days. Luckily I had two 512MB sticks of RAM lying around, so I installed those in her computer.
As I booted the machine, her net-connection did not work anymore. Just like that. No matter how hard I tried, it just wont go online. I even tried to put the old RAM back, just in case, but no help. It seems like the machine has mysteriously lost the HomePNA-adapter that is in the machine. I'm not really sure what to do next, maybe I should move the adapter to another slot, and hope that XP rediscovers it. Or maybe I should just erase everything, and reinstall the whole crap from scratch.
End result is that before I touched the machine, she had a computer that was so cluttered with crap that it was un-usable. What she got was a machine that is usable but wont get online. Linux might have it's problem but at least it
a) does not get filled with crap
b) does not slow down because it has three virus-scanners running in the background
c) does not mysteriously lose components that were working fine 5 minutes ago.
How about our Windows-server at work? It has a HD that is partitioned in to C and D-drives. One day it had switched the drive-letters around. Just like that. What used to be C, was now D, and vice versa. We rebooted the machine, no help. We rebooted again, no help. We rebooted to safe-mode, no help. we rebooted to recovery-console and checked few things (but didn't change anything). Then we rebooted for a fifth time, and this time everything worked. We didn't change anything, we just repeatedly rebooted the machine, and suddenly it started to work again. Where is the logic in this? And why does Windows suddenly decide to switch drive-letters around? Seriously? What the hell is going on here?
And how exactly are ANY of these things "simple"?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Yes. Novell is the new SCO.
If you really want to understand what's going on go read groklaw. The headline here is wrong. There is no patent cross licensing, that would violate the GPL. There is a promise which is not a license not to sue. It's a weird thing. There are also some unsaid, unprinted, nobody knows about exception.
So MS promises not to sue novell customers for MS patents with some exceptions. Most likely those exceptions involve some companies (for example google) or some technologies like XML.
MS has promised to sue other companies. Ballmer said that anybody who uses linux from anybody except novell is under a threat of a patent lawsuit from MS.
evil is as evil does
ok, here's Joe User steps:
click system
click administration
click synaptic package manager
(this is the place where everything on your computer is managed. Think of it like "Add/Remove Programs" in Windows Control Panel)
click settings
click repositories
make sure all the checkboxes are checked and click apply. This only needs to be done once.
click reload
search for nvidia-glx
click install
click apply
there you go. No terminals, no editing configuration files, all in a nice gui form, in a central management place where it's easy to ensure that you know exactly what is on your computer.
And why aren't these instructions on the wiki? because giving someone instructions to put into a console is much more concise, simple, and much more difficult to screw up than guiding them through a GUI.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I've had quite the opposite experience with most of my equipment. Unlike Windows, most of what I've needed with Linux has worked out of the box with no need to install 3rd party drivers. I've installed Ubuntu on 4 desktops and 2 laptops and Debian on another 3 desktops and have had only minor issues with a couple of these systems related to networking equipment (the fault of these issues lying squarely with Broadcom for not providing drivers nor documentation for their wireless chipsets). It is really a case of YMMV, where some people (like me) have a perfect or near-perfect result and others (like you) have an extremely difficult time. However, compared to where the Linux scene was just 2 short years ago (where there was no distribution that I could get to install completely out of the box and run reliably on any equipment I tried it on), things have improved astronomically and I only see more improvement ahead.
[insert witty comment here]
My wife hates it when I debug her computer problems just by telling her to do X, and don't explain why. The sense of being looked down-upon is what most people hate to feel. That's why she will rarely ever come to me for computer help, until she absolutely needs it. Or worse yet, she'll just give up on it entirely. You'd be surprised how common an attitude that is with many users.
As someone who specialized in Usability for my Master's, I can honestly say that it would help tremendously if all software engineers were forced to watch usability studies involving normal computer users interacting with software. Or better yet, participating in such studies and/or tutoring such folks. You will quickly realize how attitudes like yours need to change, lest you continue to alienate people even more and send them running to easier-to-use (but less secure/powerful/etc.) alternatives.
-- jchenx
It couldn't possibly have anything to do that virtually every common OS besides Windows IS a *nix variant?
... which are NOT simple things.
Perhaps. There are still no effort on interoperability on Windows.
I decided, after 10 years on a Microsoft operating system I would dual boot XP Pro and a generic install of Ubuntu
Why ? So you never used Linux before (at least, not in the 10 last years), point taken.
Reinstalled XP Pro in about 40 minutes, including time spent downloading and installing drivers
Must be a pretty streamlined process then, which betrays the fact that contrary to what you claim, you reinstalled your WinXP several time already.
To get Ubuntu to install on my machine, I had to manually edit a config file to get the screen to display correctly, but could only do so *after* the Ubuntu installer crashed (like, duh?)
Which is a complete lie. If you could edit a config file, that means Ubuntu was already installed. If the installer crashed, then it means one of two things :
- You don't understand what you're doing, thought it crashed and rebooted the machine
- It really crashed, but still managed to install the OS
I found this out after digging through Ubuntu forum posts for about an hour (there was nothing in the Wiki related to this). I like the idea of moving to open source software, but the reality is it is not as universal or simple as Windows
You never showed anything to assert this. You talked about installation issues, which do not show anything about Windows being simpler.
Windows is not universal either, it works on x86 and limps on x86_64.
And then, I'm sorry to have to tell you that once you have installed your WinXP, you still need the antivirus, antispyware,
So Windows is still harder and not universal.
XP crashes for me (in the last 4 years of using it) have been rare, and when it is it is usually a memory leak from a particular application, not XP itself
A memory leak should not crash an OS. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with interoperability.
So far, every machine I've installed Linux on I've had serious compatibility issues in every case. I'm not trying to install Linux on my alarm clock here, these are every day, very common PC parts. I've yet to have a smooth Linux installation. It's simply not for mom and pop yet.
What you don't consider is that Linux adoption is incredibly low- much lower than it should be. This is largely due, directly and indirectly, to the SCO case. Directly, businesses were pushed away from Linux out of fear of a lawsuit by SCO. Indirectly, because greater adoption of Linux would have spurred greater effort on Desktop Linux, thereby increasing adoption again, and so on- the so-called "critical mass" effect.
If it hadn't been for SCO, Linux would likely rule the world already- but SCO was such a spectacular success for MS that they're doing it again, with likely the same results. Businesses are (rightfully) scared of lawsuits. They were scared of them from SCO, and they'll be terrified of lawsuits from MS.
SCO was never meant to succeed as a company- their sole purpose from 2003 on was to hold back Linux while they fell into bankruptcy kicking and screaming. They did a spectacular job. MS is ready to take Linux on head-on now, armed with a patent portfolio, increasing amounts of TPM, and the IP social conflict setting a good stage for them to take down the last Unix.
On a side note- it appears Stallman was right again. Software Idea Patents have turned out to be a huge threat to FOSS, and it's likely to only get worse now that MS is ready to join the lawsuit game.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
"You do realize that the first two issues are completely unrelated to the OS on it, right?"
Yes they are. Linux does not suffer from that crap. OS X does not suffer from that crap. Every single computer I have been asked to "fix" has been a Windows-machine that has been filled with adware and other assorted crap. And I DO know people who use Linux (some of those Linux-users could be described as "joe Sixpack") and OS X. They don't seem to suffer from these issues. These problems are 100% focused on Windows.
"(As for the 3rd issue, yeah that's just odd, although I wouldn't be surprised if the root cause of that was also user initiated)"
What happened was that I unplugged the computer, swapped the RAM, plugged the machine back in, and the PNA-adapter was gone. Just like that. sure, you could say that I screwed something up, but that's unlikely. I have installed RAM maybe 100+ times without any issues, and I didn't go anywhere near the PNA-adapter. And even if the adapter was somehow damaged, it should still be visible in Windows (even though it didn't work anymore). But it's not. It just vanished. It's like it never existed.
"The reason why it's filled with crap and multiple virus scanners on it, is likely due your novice neighbor's actions and decisions."
Why does Windows require the user to make those decision, if it's so "simple"? Most user are utterly incapable of making those decisions (as my neighbour demonstrated), yet they are basically required in Windows. Fact is that people who use Linux or OS X, simply do not have to worry about virus-scanners or spyware, whereas Windows-users do.
"The big question is that if your neighbor was on Linux, trying to do the same thing, what would have happened?"
Nothing, since I have yet to see a Linux-install that has been infested with viruses and/or spyware.
"I don't care what platform you are on, someone is going to run into some inexplicable combination of hardware, software, and "user errors" (as well as plain old bugs) that causes bizarre things to happen."
The difference is that Windows can spontanously combust. It can change drive-letters around (I have seen that happen on our servers, twice), it can mysteriously lose working components (like what happened yesterday). Those things happen even though the user does not do anything. Sure, user could screw up Linux as well, but the damage he can do there is harder to do, and more limited by default. The user can delete his personal data, but it would take real effort for him to screw up the system. And I have never seen Linux just lose components. One minute that network-adapter is there, then it just suddenly vanishes, taking the network with it. I honestly haven't seen that happen in Linux.
"Without a doubt, the Linux issues are going to be far harder to troubleshoot and debug for your average computer user, simply because the vast majority of them have no idea what a "command line" is, much less knowing what the hell "re-compiling" means."
Why would they have to compile anything? Yes, they might have more problems with Linux. But that's not due to compiling or CLI, it's due to the fact that most users know Windows, whereas most users don't know Linux. make someone who has only used Windows in the past use Linux without any training and they will have problems, period. Same applies to other OS'es. My wife has problems using OS X, because she is used to Linux/GNOME-combo.
And, in many ways, CLI can actually be easier to use (even though using the CLI is not really a requirement in Linux). Why? Copy/Paste. Many times I do my tasks in CLI, due to the fact that when someone writes instructions to do something in CLI, you can just C/P the instructions to the terminal and hit Enter. With a GUI, you need to go through the instructions one step at a time as it tells you to "then click on the "Advanced"-tab, make sure these checkboxes are checked...."
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This is honestly not the experience I have with Ubuntu. Granted, I live in Brazil so I installed it on machines ranging from 6 months to 5 years old, not really the latest stuff, and I never have set up wi-fi, but all installations went very very smoothly. And I've been using (and installing and suggesting) Ubuntu since Hoary (and then Breezy, Dapper, Edgy, and some in between). :-/ ), but Linux installation and hardware detection has been working for me much better than Windows (my employer is mainly an MS shop) for many years now. ;-)
Actually, I don't know why I'm arguing this (maybe because you're already modded +3?
Maybe you shouldn't usually expect the very latest hardware to work out-of-the-box on Linux? It's sad this is still the state of affairs, but you know the hardware manufacturers are to blame (the most). You know it, RIGHT?
PS. A user program shouldn't be able to crash the OS, no matter how badly it's written.
The current machine I'm typing on, Celeron 1.4Ghz (P3 family) ABIT MoBo with BX chipset, Voodoo 3 Graphics card.
... I should consider the status of the Novell/MS deal before going beyond 10.2 ...)
Linux has always "just installed" on it. (First install on it was SuSE 8.0, upgrade several times up to openSUSE 10.1
Windows is a another story. At the begining the machine was my brother's (still a teenager at that time). I managed to install him Windows XP, after several weeks fiddling with BIOS settings trying to find that peculiar configuration on which the installer of Windows XP SP1 won't b0rk. Got windows running for a couple of months. Then a massive Windows crash fucked up the installation beyond any hope. Tried to find again 'that magic BIOS configuration' that allows the installer to run (Was it compatibility problems with ACPI ? Something else ?). I just gave up. My brother preferred to try using Linux until he upgraded to a newer machine better supported by Windows. (As a side note, once I did the initial installation / configuration of Linux, he managed to do well. Granted a tennager may be more apt to adapt himself to a new OS than the average Aunt-Tillie...)
When this machine became mine, I never bottered to try to install Windows again, and it has swallowed without complain all the Linux upgrades.
The next machine my brother had was a Athlon 64, K8T mobo, with 1 Go DDR, Radeon 9600XT I bought and assembled for Christmas. Athlon 64 were a very recent newcomer on the swiss market back then (we even had problems of shortages).
Linux installation was almost a kind of "put the CD in the drive and click 'Ok'" simplicity, even if the AMD64 version of SuSE 8.2 that I had in my posession was supposed to be experimental. Mostly no other complaint as of today (just having some problems to get AIGLX and Beryl working nice).
On the other hand, Windows SP1 installer kept b0rking. I took several month, a few BIOS upgrades (not searching for an update. waiting for a new release from the manufacturer) and then a newer Catalyst (same stuff : had to wait for a few new releases) before we had a stable Windows installation that would accept the whole 1Go RAM and not showing massive graphical corruption. And that with a plain 32-bit version. (I gave a few tries with Windows XP 64 in the begining but that wasn't a success either).
In the meantime my brother had once again to use linux.
The same difficulty installing Windows XP on Athlon 64 was experienced by several friends who were early adopter to jump into the 64 bits wagon. Even as of today, Windows can't boot correctly with 3Go RAM, the third DIMM rests usually out of the computer unless I need to borrow the computer to do some scientific calculation under Linux.
This two detailled examples and numerous other situations are the reason I *CAN'T* honestly consider the experience of installing Windows XP 'stellar'.
And Linux installation, on the other hand, has regulary proved to be very felxible, with possibility to install over network and even over internet (no need to have original media), to install on headless servers (SSH is my friend), etc... which is either hard or impossible to replicate with Windows.
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Actually, Slashdot is really just one big giant AI system. All the so-called "users", including this one, are really just dummy accounts for the AI. You're the only human here.
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MS is promoting pure fud. MS would NEVER sue a company for patent violation. IBM has a lot more patents on softare than MS and has already promised to let Open Source use those patents. By the amount of patents IBM has, Microsoft is violating one of them. That is why MS will never sue, but threaten to sue, ie FUD.
Mom and pop don't install Linux. Mom and pop don't install Windows. Linux is just as ready for them as Windows is (in fact, it's arguably superior in several categories). However, it does require vendor cooperation--just like Windows
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
so this is the last comment on slashdot ever,,,,,,, or
You should have ended that with "NO CARRIER".
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Is there an example of an industry where this has worked as a strategy.
It's called FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
This is a pretty classic example, actually; comment's like Ballmer's (yesterday), which hinted that people who used a non-Novell Linux would be sued, are its hallmarks. They're not tangible threats, and thus they're not things that can easily be defended against or refuted. They just serve to make the people in decision-making positions uneasy, and thus lead them down the path of least resistance. It's basically an attempt to make a smaller competitor look like an 'unknown quantity' in comparison to a well-known offering by a big-name company.
Many people consider the first instance of "FUD" in the IT world to have been by IBM against Amdahl during the mainframe wars (this is mentioned in the WP article above), but as a business tactic I'm sure you could find lots more historical examples. (Things that come to mind -- early automotive manufacturers prior to the resolution of the Selden patent, various 19th century 'railroad wars'.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Today, if you start with XP Pro with SP2 slipstreamed (or just an XP w/SP2 disc from MS) you will have about 30 minutes and four reboots just to download updates (at broadband speeds) to bring you up to current. How long ago did you do this install?
Starting with SP1, or with no-SP and installing SP2, you end up with about six reboots and an hour downloading/installing. Mind you, I'm talking about a fairly fast machine here, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"