Slashdot Mirror
Caldera OpenLinux Power Bundle
Wilson Lee
writes "Caldera Systems would like to announce the
release of Caldera's OpenLinux Power Bundle which includes
Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 and PowerQuest's PartitionMagic 4.0.
The OpenLinux Power Bundle includes complete software and
documentation for both products, at a special bundle price
of $89. For additional information on the OpenLinux Power
Bundle or to purchase it, please go to Caldera Systems'
website" Sounds like a rather useful bundle, especially
for converting those last few holdouts in the neighborhood. What would really be neat would be PM
integrated into the install like BeOS, but that is probably
just wishful thinking...
I've never heard of any using Caldera, and was curious if anyone has and what their thoughts were on it (please, no distr. wars).
Caldera? Marketing Hype and nothing else.
Like; do they do anything??
The spinning wheel must have a hypnotizing
effect!?
SuSE have a new CEO. Dunno why I posted it here though. Phone 888-UR-LINUX and ask 'em
Caldera rocks. It has KDE pre-installed and in my opinion, its much more solid than RedHat
I was one of those who refused to migrate from DOS (which third-party software and Unix utilities had made useful) to Windows. Like many of us, I found that Linux was the only really viable upgrade path from DOS. But there are _still_ DOS applications that I find useful enough to make keeping a DOS partition around for. (For me, these are Quicken and certain writing tools, like the VDE editor and the Writer's Workbench.)
My hope was that Caldera would improve the DOS/Linux integration so that I could run these apps seemlessly under Linux, via dosemu. Has this happened? And is it worth it, at this point, to convert my DOS partition to DRDOS/OPENDOS?
What do the old-DOS/new-Linux users think?
I purchased it to fix a problem with my partition table, and the only help it could give was "backup disk, destroy the partitions, and recreate." It's a bit less powerful than I had been let on to believe.
Do we do anything?
Read the messages that fly by when you boot Linux.
IPX and PPP contributions immediately come to mind. We
have also helped with providing hardware for SMP research,
we funded the early development for RPM (not important if
you do not use an RPM based distro), we brought most of the
commercial viability to Linux that you are seeing nowadays,
we made the Compaq TLAN driver for Compaq network
cards, we support Linux International, we support XFree86
(funding) and KDE (resources and possibly some funding,
I do not know for sure), we are a kernel.org mirror, we
were one of the first commercial distribution companies to
support LSB (unlike some who were dragged kicking and
screaming -- I won't name any names, though) to the
point where one of our engineers is in charge of the
LSB reference platform, yadda yadda yadda.
If you think we don't do anything, you probably aren't
looking. We do plenty. Just so you know.
Erik Ratcliffe
Caldera Systems, Inc.
Obviously you know jack about the various distros. Besides the things Mr. Radcliffe pointed out they are the only linux distro that has a good relationship with Novell. Oh ya i guess you never heard of NDS and OpenLinux is vaporware. Go offline get a clue and then find another place to post your stupid comments.
Dosemu is good and has run most of the applications I've thrown at it (compilers, Word Perfect 5.x, and some games). Keep your DOS partition, though, because I've found that the best way to run DOS stuff with dosemu is to boot a normal DOS partition. Easiest migration, anyway.
Of all the distros, I always thought the now-discontinued InfoMagic Workgroup Server was by far and away the best. After using current versions of Caldera, Slackware, and RedHat, I think they are all quite good, and pretty much interchangeable. I do have an intense dislike of FVWM95, and much prefer the simpler and easier to set up FVWM. I use Caldera at home.
As far as a window manager goes, I just want to be able to cut and paste among text and graphics windows, just like I can in MS Windows. I really don't need anything else.
I've been using DRDos/Novell DOS for many years, I find it runs Win31 much better than the MS branded product. Caldera DOS is mostly Novell DOS 7, with very few additions. You can use it with confidence.
The database products under DOS are still the most usable, and second place isn't even worth bothering with. When it comes to standards like DBase4, or Q&A, Alpha4, or Paradox, nothing even comes close, especially not any of the Windows mutations.
Cheers
Since there exists no effort to port these apps to a modern OS (Linux, perhaps), they will be around for at least another decade.
Is that right? Here is a quote from Linux Journal #57 -- January 1999, "PartitionMagic 4.0: A Linux User's Perspective" at
.Thus, I am quite certain that PartitionMagic 4.0 has some serious bugs. These bugs are so severe and so obvious that I find it hard to believe a reputable company would ship a product knowing these bugs existed . . ."
". .
In short, don't use the damn thing!
Personally, I like it better than RedHat. (Using Caldera since 1.1)
I've tried both, and would not consider others because it really *is* nice to have someplace to go for help that can help. (no flames, please - that's half the reason I'm willing to pay for support - I prefer my help without flames.)
I just tried RH5.2 to see if I'd rather switch, but I've decided to upgrade to Caldera 1.3 instead. I am considering waiting for 1.4 when it comes out with the 2.0 kernel...
So far, so good. Caldera's at least as good a choice as RH, but frowned upon by the arrogant Linux types for unknown reasons.
Spare me, please. The experience of one or a hundred users doesn't nullify the experience of tens of thousands of users. Some users have problems using RPM; some users have problems using dpkg and dselect; hell, some users have problems breathing and chewing gum simultaneously. RPM needs some enhancements, so does dselect. I personally yearn for the days of gzipped tarballs.
If OpenLinux were as bunk a product as you propose and/or if Caldera didn't care about "maintaining a user base," they wouldn't still be in business, continuing to hire, cranking out new releases, blah blah blah.
You like Debian? Fine. I've never used it. OpenLinux has blemishes, of course. ALL of the distributions do. There's room enough for all of the distros, it seems. Just spare me the purist rhetoric.
Kurt Wall
kwall@xmission.com
Two comments:
1) I do not feel that I reacted "defensively" to your post. I saw someone say that the difficulty in manipulating packages was a marketing ploy to get people to upgrade (i.e. the implication was "planned obsolesence"). I rebutted that it was not true, that RPM is not what it is because we want people to get frustrated and buy new versions of OpenLinux.
2) I have used Debian. I think it is solid, sophisticated, and about ten levels too high for your typical new Linux user. Sorry, but Debian is for people with a few years of Linux under their belts. I think it is a good distribution, and dpkg may be a good packaging tool, but I would seriously hesitate to recommend it to someone migrating to Linux from a Windows (or other) background.
'Nuff said...
Erik Ratcliffe
Caldera Systems, Inc.
Pick up this weeks CompUSA ad and look on page 12 for OpenLinux; listed as a Windows CD :)
jason
Posted by joseph@cheek.com:
yup, my preferred distro. not as cutting edge as redhat but more stable and appeals to my clients more.
Some people won't use Linux without it. Caldera definitely has an important niche.
Partition Magic has included a graphical DOS version of the utility since v1.x, and while I can't speak for v3.x or v4.x (I still use v2.x at home), that DOS version (on diskette) would be quite useful for Linux users.
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, Mac, NT, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Caldera paid RedHat money to develop a package manager. RedHat later produced RPM. These facts are pretty much uncontested. However, RedHat and Caldera disagree over whether the money paid to RedHat was used to produce RPM. Caldera shipped RedHat's distribution (with Caldera customizations) in the Fall of 1995, at the same time RedHat was shipping it's first releases with RPM. Since then, Caldera and RedHat have parted ways, and Caldera has had its own distribution for a few years now.
Caldera derives from the Corsair project at Novell, which originated in 1993, which I believe predates RedHat by some years.
Tim Bird
I have no intention of starting a flamewar, but it's exactly this type of holier-than-thou attitude that keeps the majority of the Linux
:) I'm sure that Debian is an excellent distribution. However, their desire for purity conflicts with the type of pragmatism that is essential to running a distribution company as a business. Different strokes for different folks.
distributions from converting to dpkg. Caldera VERY seriously considered switching to dpkg several times, but members of the Debian project
have historically been too inflexible in their
release schedules for a downstream vendor to
count on making their own targeted ship dates.
This inflexibility is done in the name of technical excellence, and maybe it achieves that goal (excepting of course for dselect - sorry, couldn't help it
If you want you can add the features that you like in dpkg to RPM if you want. Then the vast majority of Linux users could benefit from them.
Tim Bird
The implication from this announcement is that it includes PM4 for Linux. However, as far as I know, PM4 is only for Windows (the PowerQuest site makes no mention of a Linux version), so I assume that is what's actually being bundled.
Now a real native Linux version of PM4 would be very useful. However, a Windows version budled with a Linux distribution has limited potential, particularly as Caldera are primarily targeting commercial organisations who would be unlikely to dual boot anyway...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I bought Caldera 1.2, because I wanted the Netware support and the StarOffice cd. I had a few things that I didn't like. :-) I like to use RPM's to install my software, but as I soon discovered most RPM's out there is made for RedHat and Libc6 so I ended up having to compile everything myself. Unlike SUSE they hadn't bothered to set up their system to enable the use of most RedHat packages.
a) A soon found out that the netware client didn't have a graphical interface in the standard edition and the documentation left much to be desired, which caused me to spend quite a few hours fidgeting with those textfiles before I actually got it to work.
b) As a relative newbie at the time (and probably still
c) I found LISA, the Caldera setup tool, troublesome to use, as far as I remember LISA didn't even allow me to set norwegian keyboard. I admit that since I had gotten used to RedHat before I started using Caldera I might be predisposed, but then again when testing SUSE later on I thought YAST was very good.
d) At that time I didn't think about it, but later I have come to question wether Caldera actually want to participate in making free software like Linux a success or just leech the work of others. Both RedHat and Suse I see contributing to free software projects like Xfree86 and Gnome, but all software comming from Caldera is closed-sourced or under special licenses. The few exceptions seems to be a few patches to the IPX support. The only "high" profile contribution from Caldera seems to be the COAS project, but it seems that it has all but stopped due to the fact thar Caldera again expected everybody else to do the hard work so that they could reap the benefits.
Caldera is probably a ok choice from a technical viewpoint if you are setting up a server for a small office or something, but as a system for use on a home system I can't say i want to recommend it. Due to my questions about Caldera's principal views on software licenses and free software I recommend that people look elsewhere in anycase.
I was a fervent Caldera user for some time. I then used RH5.x. I chose and now use Debian 2.0 because the need to upgrade specific packages is much easier. I found that in RH and Caldera the dependency problems forced one as a practical matter to wait for the next version release. I concluded that this was a marketing ploy, and the fact that debian allows one to upgrade any part or the whole in an easy way (apt-get install n) is very satisfying. Debian has its own subculture in IRC, and that in and of itself is a pleasure. Debian is not as easy to install, but if you have installed Caldera and RH or other distros, you know your hardware configuration by heart by now, and you should have no problem setting up debian. If you have problems irc.debian.org #debian is an excellent resource for installation troubleshooting.
I've purchased version 1.2 and 1.3. I had trouble upgrading individual packages. So when you say "our users have no trouble with individual package upgrades using RPM" you are wrong. I was a user, and I had problems. RPMs are inferior to .DEBs. It is my opinion, and my opinion comes from my experience with both. I am no conspiracy theorist. It is obvious you would defend Caldera since you work there. I think Caldera is a good system overall. For KDE fans it is preferable. I simply prefer debian; thus, I will use what I prefer. RPMs my tell one what dependencies are needed, but do not always give a means of obtaining the dependencies. Debian does. You can defend all you want, but the fact is I was a Caldera user and now I'm not. Rather than react defensively, your company should pay heed to the reason why I left. Don't you care about maintaining a user base? Be that as it may... debian is a superior distribution by my estimation. Perhaps if you tried debian you would like it too Mr. Ratcliffe.
If RPM is not a marketing issue, then it is an inferior technical choice. Caldera is not married to RedHat standards, what is to prevent Caldera from using apt and dpkg? Nothing. Except it is not kosher for a company to switch gears like that because it gives the perception of misjudgment. Marketing is everthing to a companies bottom line. Marketing is not a conspiracy; it is a reality. The odd thing about Linux is that it thrives by users who take pleasure in using it more than by marketing. In my opinion RH is #1 because its install is the easiest. Debian is the #2 distribution because it is so good.
I don't know how BeOS has anything integrated (having never used it) but getting PM in on the scene should be a snap...SuSE 5.2 has a setup.exe file for running the install via DOS and running up PM shouldn't be a problem from there. If you're booting straight off the CD you're probably not likely to be installing from a DOS partition.
But don't " me on that.
I have been using Caldera for the last 4 months and really like it (except for the fact that it is Libc5).
The built-in Novell networking and Palm Pilot application and development tools are what really impressed me.
I would compare it to RH as far as ease of use. It is good for newbies since it has KDE pre-installed, although I use WindowMaker myslef (of course using 5.0 WITH KDE support)..Thanks WM!
I think the same..
Dosemu are pretty cool and works.
But, about the OpenDos... I don't know....
I don't have a god reason to remake the system again, and, I don't think Bill have brain to do this...... So, keep using linux, and Dosemu. Like they say in my country:" Em time que esta ganhando nao se mexe", or - Don't make modifications when your team is wining........