I wish I could do business with them. I was all set to order a couple $3000 servers, but they don't take purchase orders unless you're a fortune 500 company.
That's great -- until you realize that it cuts out a lot of multi-billion dollar companies (like mine). Gee-whiz. Wish I could send them a credit app (Penguins accounting department doesn't take them "Fortune 500 only please.").
The answer? I got a couple of Compaq's rack-mount servers for about the same money, from a company that wants to deal with me.
Steve-
-- "But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
well actually..
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Anonymous Coward
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by supporting E developers (rasterman & mandrake) VA is only helping themselfs. with E being developed faster, they're helping linux move to the desktop with a real alternative to windows. lets face it, KDE just isn't a powerful as Windows..but E is. Linux will only move to the average user if it has a *good* GUI interface, and by supporting E they are going to help sell more boxes.
Correction on your figures
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Anonymous Coward
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If your WAG is right an additional 1% of machines fail during the extended burnin, that is another one out of one HUNDRED, not one out of one THOUSAND systems. That is a significant number.
Considering that Penguin is moving what, like 600 machines a month at the time of this article that means that 6 more people were spared the greif of DOA systems. Considering the high likelihood at this stage in the game that one of those six people participates in online Linux fora, that just saved Penguin from some potentially embarrassing negative publicity. Even better, that is one more happy customer who will recommend Penguin to their friends.
Re:You don't need to spend the premium for linux H
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drwatt
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VA has name recognition. Machines I build are far faster, compatible, reliable and cheaper. We are currently revamping our company to be more Linux based. Wait to see our service and machines. Should be appearing July 5th.
-- DrWatt
What is "Fortune 500" anyway?
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pirkka
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I've heard of it too many times not to ask... -- Pirkka
Re:What is "Fortune 500" anyway?
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ivan_13013
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Speaking as someone in the VC process (recently successful too!), it's very difficult to find VC folks that are willing to give you funding without eating your company.
I've recently read tales of people giving up 40% of their companies for $500k. Crazy. I give the VA guys credit for making through the VCs, and presumably heading for the Mezz without having their company eaten.
--j
--
The unsig!
Re:Chris Can you answer this...Dell is undeserving
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Anonymous Coward
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Dell has a history of slamming Unix..You should check your facts..In 1991, Dell had its own Unix distribution. They rewrote some of the Unix core stuff to work with x86. There UNIX was based on AT&T..
Since there was not much of a market for UNIX on PC then they closed it around 92...But they are comming back very strong.
You may not want Dell, But since 91 we have bought Dells, quality, service and performance is truly great..We plan to stick with them. Will be probably buying close to 1000 Linux servers with in the next year from them..But hey it is your money so go spend it / waste it where ever you like..Me, I have to answer to our users and the corporation..so gotta use the brain instead of the gut when choosing hardware..Thats why it will be DELL again..for the next round of hardware..
Does anyone else here think it is in poor taste..
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Anonymous Coward
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...for chrisd to whine in every thread that's about Penguin Computing? Maybe if he'd stop reading/. and do his job there wouldn't be so many horror stories about screwed up orders at VA.
Anonymous Coward Grand Poobah PhD SOB VP Cowards Anonymous
(and I'm also a member)
it may sound good, but is it?
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Anonymous Coward
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I've also been hit by the customer service problems at Penguin. After ordering a server on 6/20 and receiving it on 7/1 (yeah, a *little* late), we unpacked it and fired it up -- DOA.
It looks like the drives were jarred loose (not their fault), but they'd neglected to ship the key for the hot swap drive enclosures so I can't even reseat the things!
The thing that really irks me about the whole thing is that getting status information was like pulling teeth.
Pat Eyler pate@screamdesign.com
Re:it may sound good, but is it?
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Anonymous Coward
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If you talk to other people, you'll find that many had similar experiences with penguin. they're trying to do way too much way too fast and ship machines built by college kids with hardly any QA at all.
If you're willing to pay the premium for a linux machine, buy it from a serious company.
It's too bad you see it that way.
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chrisd
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So if someone should post about VA I shouldn't comment on it just because the story is about a company that ships Linux machines? Whatever dude.
On another note, in the few times that people have ahd troubles with VA, I have always been the first to put my email and number out there and personally try to fix whatever problem occured. Yeah, I can see why you'd hate for someone to do that.
And no, I will not stop reading slashdot, I enjoy it, fascist. (oops, almost invoked godwin's law)
Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems -- Grant Chair, Linux Int. VP, SVLUG
--
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Re:Or you could...
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Anonymous Coward
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I hate to tell you this, but,newsflash, having the author of the ext2 fs and raid on staff -does- add value to our systems.
how? unless you are going to start a linux distribution, how could it?
In fact, I would prefer that my hardware vendor not mess around with the software too much, even if it is open source. Once software works, messing around with it just because you can is silly.
As a former VA customer, I can tell you that hiring a whiz-bang, hard-ass manufacturing vet with a good knowledge of inventory management would serve you better.
Looking at Dell and Compaq, I see two companies that spent a lot of early time revolutionizing distribution and manufacturing, not software.
i agree
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Anonymous Coward
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if it isn't illegal, say it.
people in here are always looking to solve "the problem of free speech" particularly when it isn't harping their particular tune.
slashdot makes me howl - i've never seen such a disparate group support such a narrow set of ideals so vociferously. its even worse than usenet.
And we did, his name is Dan Schorr (not the newsguy, mind you:-), he's really done wonders during our growth spurt.
But on the "usefullness" question, look at it this way, we ship systems, and we base our parts decisions on advice from the engineers who wrote the software. We aren't in the distro business. They do good work on linux, linux grows, we grow and linux progresses.
So the logical next question is "what about Raster, Mandrake, Mark V. etc.." well, we anticipate a time when the majority of shipments will be desktops vs. servers, at that point it will be nice to have desktop guys here to help out.
Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems
-- Grant Chair, Linux Int. VP, SVLUG
--
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
VA's success depends on Linux's success so duh!
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Anonymous Coward
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VA has nothing without Linux it is in their best interest that Linux be as rock solid and as complete of a solution as possible.
VA hiring coders is pretty logical if you think about it. If LNZ writes some new ubercool RAID drivers VA sells more RAID systems. If Raster and Mandrake make the desktop better then VA sells more boxes aimed at the desktop.
Makes perfect sense to me. Yes they are a hardware company but their success depends on Linux's success so paying people to make it better sure seems rather logical to me, not to mention when you've got that type of expertise in house the quality of support you can provide and your added value is raised greatly.
Chris DiBona
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Anonymous Coward
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I don't know the guy, but it seems to me he is doing his job if he is participating in online fora, and with his active role in SVLUG.
As for the new and noteworthy employees of VA - more power to them, they seem to be happy enough to work at VA and if they want to leave for any reason, I'm sure they could do that too. Get over it.
Continued success to both VA and to Penguin!
Why does everything have to turn into some kind of flame war? KDE/Gnome, Gnu/NoGnu, OpenSource/FSF, RedHat/every other distro.
Sleazy to make baseless anonymous claims.
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Eric+Green
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If I have a complaint, I damn well say it, straight forward and up front. I don't go waffling around behind the "Anonymous Coward" apparition slamming a man's livelihood.
I'm no apologist for VA Research and frankly don't even like most of their product line (with the exception of their 4U rack, which might look a bit dated but which is a solid piece of engineering). But that doesn't change a thing. To accuse me of a VA love fest is just typical sleazy conduct by somebody embarrassed about being called down for his sleazy behavior.
If you have a complaint, say it. Otherwise I, and anybody else here with any sense, will assume (probably correctly) that you work for a competitor of VA trying to slime them from behind the veil of anonymity in the sort of sleazy behavior that typifies Microsoft, not Linux. 'Nuff said.
Re:Sleazy to make baseless anonymous claims.
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Anonymous Coward
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Oh, my. Eric why do not you drop from your high chair to the lowly blue planet.
I have seen some of your slanted posts. Hardly any difference between AC's and you when it come to tooting your own company's horn. Only differnce, AC got AC as the name and you got Eric Green as the name. That is is my 2 bits.
Re:more support for funky devices
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Eric+Green
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I think part of VA's point is that they've hired a few device driver writers over the past six months. Penguin is not yet to the point where they can support their own brace of device driver authors, but I'm sure they'll hire a few as they grow.
I don't think you're quite aware of how tiny these companies were only a year ago... only a year ago, VA Research probably was doing about the same amount of business that Penguin is doing today, and Penguin today can barely cover overhead if the amount of money listed in the article is correct (the hardware business is *EXPENSIVE*, it's not like the software business where you buy disks for $3 and sell them for $50, if you're making 30% gross profit off of a hardware sale you're doing good). So until recently, Linux hardware vendors just weren't in a position to actually write drivers. Sure, they donated video cards and such to device driver authors (e.g. the Neomagic driver for laptops came about because a vendor loaned the author a laptop to write it on), but paying a $50K/year or more salary to a device driver author when you're barely making overhead (forget about any real profit!) just isn't feasible.
As for the *BSD's, I like them. The problem is that they don't support most high-end hardware. For example, where is the RAID controller support for FreeBSD? There was a guy where I recommended FreeBSD to him because it'd handle files bigger than 2 gigabytes (sorry Linus, but 2 gigabytes is too small in today's world), but he couldn't use it because he could not find a hardware RAID controller that worked with it.
Actually, my favorite *BSD at the moment is OpenBSD. *EXTREMELY* clean "classic" BSD. Heck, even their install program is just a shell script, that you can stop in the middle and look at and restart and do the steps by hand even if you so desire. Classic Unix, the way it was in the old days. Makes you pine for the days when Linux was similarly small and uncluttered and straightforward. Unfortunately, the moment you try to get a modern GUI running on OpenBSD you immediately learn the reason for part of the clutter of modern Linux systems -- there's just a ton of graphics libraries and such needed by modern software. Just building 'ghostscript' pulled in over a half dozen other packages...
My FreeBSD 3.2 should be here soon. Tim installed it on a machine in the lab and it rocked on a machine with only 16 megabytes of RAM even when running resource-hungry KDE. Linux dies under KDE if you try running it with less than 32 megabytes of RAM (and it really prefers more than 32 megs, 64 for best performance). It'll be interesting to compare it with OpenBSD, I think OpenBSD will prove out to be much cleaner, but FreeBSD will probably end up being more practical due to the larger number of packages and ports available for it, as well as much faster on the x86 platform (of course OpenBSD is much faster on other platforms, since FreeBSD doesn't support any other platforms yet!). If the *BSD's had been available at the time Linus was looking for a low-cost Unix clone, I know we'd all be running FreeBSD today. It wasn't, and we aren't, but that doesn't make it a bad OS, just one without enough hardware support to make it feasible for the big file servers where its fast speed and support for large files would be great.
Re:Does anyone else here think it is in poor taste
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Eric+Green
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I have no personal reason to love VA (hint: I don't work for them, have never recieved a dime from them, and am no longer in the Linux hardware world), but I do think that Chris had a valid point. Seems to be plenty of "Anonymous Cowards" posting testimonials of praise about Penguin and slamming VA here. And frankly, I think it's kind of sleazy. Not to mention unnecessary -- Penguin has done a very good job of moving from $0 to $1M within a year's time, thanks to choosing a name uniquely suited to the Linux market, aggressive marketing, and product that meets a demand (Linux). And none of that requires sleaze.
For those who complain that one or the other is late with shipments, etc., one problem with being that size is that the supply chain is a b****. Especially when you outgrow what a Tech Data or Ingram Micro can give you, but you aren't big enough to buy things in quantity 1,000 directly from the manufacturer. I can attest from personal experience that it's easy to chunk machines out the door lickety-split all day long -- as long as you have the parts. VA and Penguin have an advantage in that they're next door to many distributors' warehouses, but supply side still can't be a picnic.
more support for funky devices
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dru
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Why aren't these hardware companies doing more to support drivers for cool hardware, like mpeg decoders, dvd drives,...? And what about the BSDs?
For the Free Software community, that's the really key thing they could contribute -- drivers for otherwise closed & proprietary technology.
I'd like to see more valueadd before I'd plunk down the big bucks for a linux hardware solution. (Penguin's going the right way by bundling LCDproc devices)
I meant 1% of 5-10 %, or one out of a thousand or two thousand.
That still being good etc, you have to compare it to tripling your burnin costs. How much is that one in a thousand worth? Suppose it costs $10 to burnin, or $50 (I don't know). That means the cost has now gone to $30, or $150, on every system, to save one in a thousand from being shipped back. Might it not be better to save the $30,000 or $150,000 and simply FedEx a replacement?
Ah yes, the wit of a fool.
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Anonymous Coward
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Wake up, idiot. NeXTStep was, bar none, the most powerful *DESKTOP* system created. Can you say Unix? I thought so.
Can you say MacOS/X which will be out on desktops probably within a year. I thought so.
Anyone who thinks Unix can't function on the desktop or that somehow functioning on the desktop will make it less useful as a server have obviously never worked on a computer.
Then go start Beastie Computing.
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Anonymous Coward
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If you're so damn interested about seeing *BSD shipping on your hardware then start your own company.
Oh, I forgot, you dipshit beasties can't tolerate someone not supporting you.
Fuck off.
Re:Anonymous but Penguin lover. Here's why...
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Anonymous Coward
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Looks like you really work for Penguin Computers..:-)..Try cover your tracks better next time..I am not going to tell you how I figured out..
Re:Isn't it strange...
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Anonymous Coward
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Anybody notice how the article indirectly slammed VA? Sam said that the problem with VC was that you ended up giving control of your company to all those outsiders from Sun, Apple, IBM, and so forth. How many of VA's top vice presidents come from within the Linux world? Is there even ONE of them who knows anything about Linux besides that it's what VA sells?
Chris Can you answer this...
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Anonymous Coward
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Chris, back in March when Dell started preloading Linux...you commented that they were not truly commited to Linux.
What do you say now, we checked out the Dell web site. Very commited to Linux with drivers for Linux (and solaris and SCO which they had for years)
BTW, the article is misleading, Dell does not buy motherboards, but design and build them in-house. That is the reason for their outstanding quality and performance. Also, for all the flamers, Dell is a minority invester in REDHAT..
Cool boxes..you can buy the servers, desktops and workstations too!! No Elcheapo parts
Re:Chris Can you answer this...
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chrisd
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Well, when I see dell hiring linux developers and releasign code back, I'll say they are truly committed.
Chris -- Grant Chair, Linux Int. VP, SVLUG
--
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
hoody hoo!
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Anonymous Coward
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lodi lodi we like to party
Re:How to make money with Open Source Software?
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whimsy
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Open source really isn't that big a deal to the end user. Yeah, we can talk about competition enhancing the marketplace, but end users don't really care whether the program is good, they care whether it's good ENOUGH. Once it can get your work done, the program is sufficient. The future of computers isn't in selling software, it's in selling business solutions. You might use software, and you might sell it, but it's just a tool. It's kind of a fuzzy concept, but my point is that, open source or no, the money will always be in helping people get their work done better. 97% stability under NT is still one day down every month. People will pay loads, though, to have NT reconfig'd and supported to boost the number to 99.5 and higher. People will also pay loads to have linux configured. Companies want an out-of-box solution.
Some vague evidence that it's not much
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A+nonymous+Coward
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I worked for 7 years writing board and chip level diags for a 68k board manufacturer. I sure don't remember the stats now, but we burned in for 24 hours or so, and most failures were in the beginning. I will make a SWAG and say the next two days might have detected 1% more failures, which were already in the 5-10% range at most. So you triple your burnin expenses to avoid failing one system out of a thousand.
Nice article; I wish all of the Linux hardware companies well.
Linux needs to be available pre-installed on computers available off-the-shelf at retail outlets for it to start invading the home in large numbers; a properly configured Linux box is not any harder to use than a Windows box.
After all, how many of your non-techie friends/family instlled their own copy of Windows? (As an example, Caldera is easier to install than Win98SE; reviews at my site)
Recently I showed a Mandrake installation running KDE to a friend of mine (who is a true dyed in wool Windows NT supporter / advocate) and his initial comment was: "It's just like Windows" - he had never previuosly evem tried to use a Linux box.
Sam Ockman is the man
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Anonymous Coward
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Of course they mentioned the crappier of the BBS's he was a cosysop on back in the day. He was also cosysop of The Big Bang Burger Barn which was much much froopier.
The article would have been far more interesting if it had included some of the suspense surrounding his stalker over at VA who thinks Sam Ockman is behind every pro-Penguin testimonial on the Internet.
VA
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Anonymous Coward
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gotta agree with previous posters.
i have no idea why va is hiring hotshot linux developers. ted t'so and rasterman aren't going to get you a better linux box any faster or more reliably. va customers are going to foot the bill to pay for all that star power. va should save the r&d department for after they can actually process orders correctly.
Mmmh, let's see, paying the current maintainer of ext2fs won't help improving it, and working on the journalled version of ext2 so that people don't have to wait hours for each fsck on huge disks. I guess VA can't use that work at all:-) (work which will obviously be available to everyone). For those who attended Ted's talk on btrees in ext2 at linuxexpo 98, he never got the chance to implement it because he was too busy doing other things at his previous job. Well now, he'll have the chance to work on those things.
As for Rasterman and Mandrake, if you look at how seriously broken the desktop is in RH 6.0, I'm not quite sure why it would make sense to improve those either...
You don't need to spend the premium for linux HW
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Anonymous Coward
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It amazes me how many people are willing to pay a premium for VA and Penguin desktop boxes.
For large servers, maybe, but for rack systems or desktop machines, nearly any system with half-decent components will do. For flat out speed I can walk down to Fry's with a hardware compatibility list and throw together a box faster than I think either offers right now.
Added to which, now VA has all of these software developers in its employ, and VA customers will probably end up footing the bill to have Rasterman on staff, even though he really adds nothing material to their system.
Hardware companies would be better off following Dell's lead and specialize in inventory management, not window manager development.
....
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Anonymous Coward
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> Penguin makes computers pre-installed with the > Linux-based operating system
Damn, that is one politically correct way of putting it. Not "GNU/Linux," which pisses some people off, and not just "Linux," which pisses the other people off.
Not only that, but although it was mostly `open source', I think `free software' was, if not mentioned directly, at least stronly alluded to by such words as ideals and dogma. Not something one would normally associate with `open source' alone.
I can understand the avoidance of mentioning `free software', but it's still sad that anybody directly mentioning `free software' tends to get branded as a kook.
Anyway, it was certainly a good article.
--
Bill - aka taniwha -- Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
If they ever open up that RTP branch...
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Anonymous Coward
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...service at Penguin would re-define the industry standards.
Why these boxes cost a premium
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Anonymous Coward
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VA boxes have to sell at a premium just to make up for all the VC funding. They are growing way too fast and there are plenty of horror stories about orders slipping through the cracks. Then there is the extra money that must be made to cover all the time Chris DiBona spends posting on Slashdot about Sam Ockman when he should be working.
Penguin has really intrigued me, I gotta admit. Their systems aren't cheap but they are all made with quality hardware and work very well. Their "low end" systems are actually quite fast and they aren't really in the cheap home computer market so it isn't fair to compare them to the $500 linux systems you can buy these days.
The other big difference I see is that VA keeps adjusting their course to maximize profits (with everything else being secondary) while Penguin seems to kick back a lot to the community and they just happen to make good money doing it. Great contrast of how greed can screw up one company, and how another can avoid it and have fun while not necessarily growing as big.
More evidence...
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Anonymous Coward
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...of South Park's corrupting influence! The first image you get after visiting the site are two penguins who have ignited their anal wind and are flying through the air under SATAN's influence! Beware!
(or laugh:)
I would be curious to know, though, how many systems exhibit some sort of failure within that 24-72 hr window that Penguin tests in but VA doesn't. There's probably some statistical analysis you could use to determine if those extra 48 hrs are significant (would probably have to compare against units which failed within the warranty period, which is probably every one that has ever failed to this point).
Not "Sleazy"
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Anonymous Coward
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If someone has had a poor experiene with VA or Penguin or anyone, they should be able to talk about it in here. What is "sleazy" about complaining about bad service or products? Are you so wrapped up in your linux lovefest that you can't understand that consumers have a right to talk too?
I managed to get my hands on a Dell Precision 410 with Redhat 6.0 pre-installed (I won the LinuxCare win-a-dell contest). I have to say, Dell did a nice job configuring it. It's all slicked up with xdm, so if you didn't want to, you'd never even see a command line. Hell, I bet even a kindergartener or an MCSE could administer this thing! Pre-installed Linux is most definitely a Good Thing for the community, I'd say. ----------------------
Funny how Alison Huynh mentions crossing the chasm, while I worker as an engineer for a speech recognition company, they hired those guys to come in and help them with their buisness plan. Going so far as to make all of us (engineers) go listen to that crap....
You can take on the gorilla, you just gotta catch him when he's not looking.
Sitting in front of me are 2 machines from Penguin Computing. All in all there good machines. My biggest issues with Pengin is SERVICE!!!! The computers were deliverd 2 1/2 weeks late, one monitor short, one secure web server short and no manuals for the SCSI card or tape drive. I also never got a detailed description of each computer I had purchased. (Even after asking them 3 times for them).
Calling for tech support was even more fun. I guess I thought they would have had a detailed description of each computer they had "Custom Built" for me, but now I just assume each order form must get tossed out a window after a computer is shipped. I was trying to get X working right and called to ask them to lookup and tell me what video card was in my computer, they had no idea who I was, or what type of computer I had purchased, even after giving them the serial number.
And if your interested, check out the technical support area on there site.
http://www.rightnowtech.com/cgi-bin/penguin?faq
WOW, a whole 11 questions.
I guess all I have to say is this baby penguin makes some nice hardware, but had better beef up on service if they want to play with the big penguins.
Wow, I'll say. My server was almost 3 weeks late and we initially agreed on an expidite order and fee!!! Then they didn't send the entire order! I really had trouble getting them to call back or even email, until our CFO started barking about payment cancellation. Nice machine, but not worth the pain. I'll build next time (I thought this would be quicker) Grrrrrr
How most of these posts seem to be about VA and not aobut Penguin? Honestly, this is kind of creeping me out, is VA a big topic over at Penguin?
It seems to me that the Linux HW world is big enough for a lot of players, Penguin and VA included, but this sort of strange AC posting simply to slam competitors is just uncool.
On another note, VA has the volume of sales to be able to have people like Ted and Raster on staff and we feel it is our duty to hire people like them as otherwise, Linux is just some huge exploitation game, and we are not into that.
Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems. -- Grant Chair, Linux Int. VP, SVLUG
--
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
This is actually a problem we've tackled carefully, each VP that comes in is, well, forced to drink our Kool-Aid. The problem is finding specialists in thier field who are also linux zealots. It's not possible in some specialties, so we have to literally train them to understand Linux.
This is a problem that Penguin had with thier vp, Alison as well, it's nothing new. All of the growing Linux companies have to deal with this.
Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems
-- Grant Chair, Linux Int. VP, SVLUG
--
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Capitalism is a huge exploitation game
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
so get used to it.
of course, since you're #1 you have to assume everyone is gunning for you
FreeBSD support would be nice
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Anonymous Coward
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I don't know why Penguin is so facsist about supporting only linux - FreeBSD shold be a perfectly acceptable platform to support.
Oh, I forgot that the Finnish Inquisition does not tolerate alternatives.
Re:Chris Can you answer this...Dell is undeserving
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Dell has a history of slamming Unix and promoting NT. They are as committed to MSFT as you can get. MSFT wants GNU/Linux gone. Who needs friends like these? Dell will never get a penny from me.
Or you could...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
...not hire people that don't add value to your product, charge less for your overpriced systems, and not have to worry at all about all the Sam Ockmans you seem to see around every corner.
Well, of course we see competitors around every corner, that's how modern corporations work. I hate to tell you this, but , newsflash, having the author of the ext2 fs and raid on staff -does- add value to our systems. And the quality of components we use does mean that they are more costly than the average machine, but so be it, people want good machines, and we'll sell them to them.
We really don't see not hiring good people as an alternative.
Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems
-- Grant Chair, Linux Int. VP, SVLUG
--
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Ya want Linux in RTP? Try Indelible Blue
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Indelible Blue knows what service is all about. And their prices beat both Penguin and VA. Lots of Linux software, too.
Anonymous but Penguin lover. Here's why...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
...I work for one of the companies that Penguin is gunning against. I honestly think while my employer is huge, we don't have a chance in the Linux market selling machines against Penguin. We're too big to move that fast, any any real effort to sell Linux machines in huge volume will hurt other parts of our business.
When it came time for me to buy a dedicated Linux box instead of messing with this dual boot stuff, I called Penguin. Being in the business I can say that the components that Penguin uses offer no compromises (except for the IOMega drive, which Penguin says right up front is garbage but offered as a convenience to customers that really require it).
I'd love to post with my real name. But would Penguin hire me when my employer decides to can my ass for singing songs of praise against a competitor?
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could do business with them. I was all set to order a couple $3000 servers, but they don't take purchase orders unless you're a fortune 500 company.
That's great -- until you realize that it cuts out a lot of multi-billion dollar companies (like mine). Gee-whiz. Wish I could send them a credit app (Penguins accounting department doesn't take them "Fortune 500 only please.").
The answer? I got a couple of Compaq's rack-mount servers for about the same money, from a company that wants to deal with me.
Steve-
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
by supporting E developers (rasterman & mandrake) VA is only helping themselfs. with E being developed faster, they're helping linux move to the desktop with a real alternative to windows. lets face it, KDE just isn't a powerful as Windows..but E is. Linux will only move to the average user if it has a *good* GUI interface, and by supporting E they are going to help sell more boxes.
If your WAG is right an additional 1% of machines fail during the extended burnin, that is another one out of one HUNDRED, not one out of one THOUSAND systems. That is a significant number.
Considering that Penguin is moving what, like 600 machines a month at the time of this article that means that 6 more people were spared the greif of DOA systems. Considering the high likelihood at this stage in the game that one of those six people participates in online Linux fora, that just saved Penguin from some potentially embarrassing negative publicity. Even better, that is one more happy customer who will recommend Penguin to their friends.
VA has name recognition. Machines I build are far faster, compatible, reliable and cheaper. We are currently revamping our company to be more Linux based. Wait to see our service and machines. Should be appearing July 5th.
DrWatt
I've heard of it too many times not to ask...
--
Pirkka
last time i checked, va wasn't hacking the kernel but selling boxes.
va is a hardware vendor. someone hacking ext2 or E should be working at caldera or redhat, where this code makes a difference.
So IMHO some software sure makes sence.
--
Pirkka Jokela
I've recently read tales of people giving up 40% of their companies for $500k. Crazy. I give the VA guys credit for making through the VCs, and presumably heading for the Mezz without having their company eaten.
--j
The unsig!
Dell has a history of slamming Unix..You should check your facts..In 1991, Dell had its own Unix distribution. They rewrote some of the Unix core
stuff to work with x86. There UNIX was based on AT&T..
Since there was not much of a market for UNIX on PC then they closed it around 92...But they are comming back very strong.
You may not want Dell, But since 91 we have bought Dells, quality, service and performance is truly great..We plan to stick with them. Will be probably buying close to 1000 Linux servers with in the next year from them..But hey it is your money so go spend it / waste it where ever you like..Me, I have to answer to our users and the corporation..so gotta use the brain instead of the gut when choosing hardware..Thats why it will be DELL again..for the next round of hardware..
...for chrisd to whine in every thread that's about Penguin Computing? Maybe if he'd stop reading /. and do his job there wouldn't be so many horror stories about screwed up orders at VA.
Anonymous Coward
Grand Poobah
PhD
SOB
VP Cowards Anonymous
(and I'm also a member)
I've also been hit by the customer service problems at Penguin. After ordering a server on 6/20 and receiving it on 7/1 (yeah, a *little* late), we unpacked it and fired it up -- DOA.
It looks like the drives were jarred loose (not their fault), but they'd neglected to ship the key for the hot swap drive enclosures so I can't even reseat the things!
The thing that really irks me about the whole thing is that getting status information was like pulling teeth.
Pat Eyler
pate@screamdesign.com
On another note, in the few times that people have ahd troubles with VA, I have always been the first to put my email and number out there and personally try to fix whatever problem occured. Yeah, I can see why you'd hate for someone to do that.
And no, I will not stop reading slashdot, I enjoy it, fascist. (oops, almost invoked godwin's law)
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I hate to tell you this, but ,newsflash, having the author of the ext2 fs and raid on staff -does- add value to our systems.
how? unless you are going to start a linux distribution, how could it?
In fact, I would prefer that my hardware vendor not mess around with the software too much, even if it is open source. Once software works, messing around with it just because you can is silly.
As a former VA customer, I can tell you that hiring a whiz-bang, hard-ass manufacturing vet with a good knowledge of inventory management would serve you better.
Looking at Dell and Compaq, I see two companies that spent a lot of early time revolutionizing distribution and manufacturing, not software.
if it isn't illegal, say it.
people in here are always looking to solve "the problem of free speech" particularly when it isn't harping their particular tune.
slashdot makes me howl - i've never seen such a disparate group support such a narrow set of ideals so vociferously. its even worse than usenet.
But on the "usefullness" question, look at it this way, we ship systems, and we base our parts decisions on advice from the engineers who wrote the software. We aren't in the distro business. They do good work on linux, linux grows, we grow and linux progresses.
So the logical next question is "what about Raster, Mandrake, Mark V. etc.." well, we anticipate a time when the majority of shipments will be desktops vs. servers, at that point it will be nice to have desktop guys here to help out.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
VA has nothing without Linux it is in their best interest that Linux be as rock solid and as complete of a solution as possible.
VA hiring coders is pretty logical if you think about it. If LNZ writes some new ubercool RAID drivers VA sells more RAID systems. If Raster and Mandrake make the desktop better then VA sells more boxes aimed at the desktop.
Makes perfect sense to me. Yes they are a hardware company but their success depends on Linux's success so paying people to make it better sure seems rather logical to me, not to mention when you've got that type of expertise in house the quality of support you can provide and your added value is raised greatly.
I don't know the guy, but it seems to me he is doing his job if he is participating in online fora, and with his active role in SVLUG.
As for the new and noteworthy employees of VA - more power to them, they seem to be happy enough to work at VA and if they want to leave for any reason, I'm sure they could do that too. Get over it.
Continued success to both VA and to Penguin!
Why does everything have to turn into some kind of flame war? KDE/Gnome, Gnu/NoGnu, OpenSource/FSF, RedHat/every other distro.
If I have a complaint, I damn well say it, straight forward and up front. I don't go waffling around behind the "Anonymous Coward" apparition slamming a man's livelihood.
I'm no apologist for VA Research and frankly don't even like most of their product line (with the exception of their 4U rack, which might look a bit dated but which is a solid piece of engineering). But that doesn't change a thing. To accuse me of a VA love fest is just typical sleazy conduct by somebody embarrassed about being called down for his sleazy behavior.
If you have a complaint, say it. Otherwise I, and anybody else here with any sense, will assume (probably correctly) that you work for a competitor of VA trying to slime them from behind the veil of anonymity in the sort of sleazy behavior that typifies Microsoft, not Linux. 'Nuff said.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I think part of VA's point is that they've hired a few device driver writers over the past six months. Penguin is not yet to the point where they can support their own brace of device driver authors, but I'm sure they'll hire a few as they grow.
I don't think you're quite aware of how tiny these companies were only a year ago... only a year ago, VA Research probably was doing about the same amount of business that Penguin is doing today, and Penguin today can barely cover overhead if the amount of money listed in the article is correct (the hardware business is *EXPENSIVE*, it's not like the software business where you buy disks for $3 and sell them for $50, if you're making 30% gross profit off of a hardware sale you're doing good). So until recently, Linux hardware vendors just weren't in a position to actually write drivers. Sure, they donated video cards and such to device driver authors (e.g. the Neomagic driver for laptops came about because a vendor loaned the author a laptop to write it on), but paying a $50K/year or more salary to a device driver author when you're barely making overhead (forget about any real profit!) just isn't feasible.
As for the *BSD's, I like them. The problem is that they don't support most high-end hardware. For example, where is the RAID controller support for FreeBSD? There was a guy where I recommended FreeBSD to him because it'd handle files bigger than 2 gigabytes (sorry Linus, but 2 gigabytes is too small in today's world), but he couldn't use it because he could not find a hardware RAID controller that worked with it.
Actually, my favorite *BSD at the moment is OpenBSD. *EXTREMELY* clean "classic" BSD. Heck, even their install program is just a shell script, that you can stop in the middle and look at and restart and do the steps by hand even if you so desire. Classic Unix, the way it was in the old days. Makes you pine for the days when Linux was similarly small and uncluttered and straightforward. Unfortunately, the moment you try to get a modern GUI running on OpenBSD you immediately learn the reason for part of the clutter of modern Linux systems -- there's just a ton of graphics libraries and such needed by modern software. Just building 'ghostscript' pulled in over a half dozen other packages...
My FreeBSD 3.2 should be here soon. Tim installed it on a machine in the lab and it rocked on a machine with only 16 megabytes of RAM even when running resource-hungry KDE. Linux dies under KDE if you try running it with less than 32 megabytes of RAM (and it really prefers more than 32 megs, 64 for best performance). It'll be interesting to compare it with OpenBSD, I think OpenBSD will prove out to be much cleaner, but FreeBSD will probably end up being more practical due to the larger number of packages and ports available for it, as well as much faster on the x86 platform (of course OpenBSD is much faster on other platforms, since FreeBSD doesn't support any other platforms yet!). If the *BSD's had been available at the time Linus was looking for a low-cost Unix clone, I know we'd all be running FreeBSD today. It wasn't, and we aren't, but that doesn't make it a bad OS, just one without enough hardware support to make it feasible for the big file servers where its fast speed and support for large files would be great.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I have no personal reason to love VA (hint: I don't work for them, have never recieved a dime from them, and am no longer in the Linux hardware world), but I do think that Chris had a valid point. Seems to be plenty of "Anonymous Cowards" posting testimonials of praise about Penguin and slamming VA here. And frankly, I think it's kind of sleazy. Not to mention unnecessary -- Penguin has done a very good job of moving from $0 to $1M within a year's time, thanks to choosing a name uniquely suited to the Linux market, aggressive marketing, and product that meets a demand (Linux). And none of that requires sleaze.
For those who complain that one or the other is late with shipments, etc., one problem with being that size is that the supply chain is a b****. Especially when you outgrow what a Tech Data or Ingram Micro can give you, but you aren't big enough to buy things in quantity 1,000 directly from the manufacturer. I can attest from personal experience that it's easy to chunk machines out the door lickety-split all day long -- as long as you have the parts. VA and Penguin have an advantage in that they're next door to many distributors' warehouses, but supply side still can't be a picnic.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Why aren't these hardware companies doing more to support drivers for cool hardware, like mpeg decoders, dvd drives, ...? And what about the BSDs?
For the Free Software community, that's the really key thing they could contribute -- drivers for otherwise closed & proprietary technology.
I'd like to see more valueadd before I'd plunk down the big bucks for a linux hardware solution. (Penguin's going the right way by bundling LCDproc devices)
I meant 1% of 5-10 %, or one out of a thousand or two thousand.
That still being good etc, you have to compare it to tripling your burnin costs. How much is that one in a thousand worth? Suppose it costs $10 to burnin, or $50 (I don't know). That means the cost has now gone to $30, or $150, on every system, to save one in a thousand from being shipped back. Might it not be better to save the $30,000 or $150,000 and simply FedEx a replacement?
It's their business decision.
--
Infuriate left and right
Wake up, idiot. NeXTStep was, bar none, the most powerful *DESKTOP* system created. Can you say Unix? I thought so.
Can you say MacOS/X which will be out on desktops probably within a year. I thought so.
Anyone who thinks Unix can't function on the desktop or that somehow functioning on the desktop will make it less useful as a server have obviously never worked on a computer.
If you're so damn interested about seeing *BSD shipping on your hardware then start your own company.
Oh, I forgot, you dipshit beasties can't tolerate someone not supporting you.
Fuck off.
Looks like you really work for Penguin Computers ..:-)..Try cover your tracks better next time..I am not going to tell you how I figured out..
Anybody notice how the article indirectly slammed VA? Sam said that the problem with VC was that you ended up giving control of your company to all those outsiders from Sun, Apple, IBM, and so forth. How many of VA's top vice presidents come from within the Linux world? Is there even ONE of them who knows anything about Linux besides that it's what VA sells?
Chris, back in March when Dell started preloading Linux...you commented that they were not truly commited to Linux.
What do you say now, we checked out the Dell web site. Very commited to Linux with drivers for Linux (and solaris and SCO which they had for years)
BTW, the article is misleading, Dell does not buy motherboards, but design and build them in-house. That is the reason for their outstanding quality and performance. Also, for all the flamers, Dell is a minority invester in REDHAT..
Cool boxes..you can buy the servers, desktops and workstations too!! No Elcheapo parts
lodi lodi we like to party
Open source really isn't that big a deal to the end user. Yeah, we can talk about competition enhancing the marketplace, but end users don't really care whether the program is good, they care whether it's good ENOUGH. Once it can get your work done, the program is sufficient. The future of computers isn't in selling software, it's in selling business solutions. You might use software, and you might sell it, but it's just a tool. It's kind of a fuzzy concept, but my point is that, open source or no, the money will always be in helping people get their work done better. 97% stability under NT is still one day down every month. People will pay loads, though, to have NT reconfig'd and supported to boost the number to 99.5 and higher. People will also pay loads to have linux configured. Companies want an out-of-box solution.
I worked for 7 years writing board and chip level diags for a 68k board manufacturer. I sure don't remember the stats now, but we burned in for 24 hours or so, and most failures were in the beginning. I will make a SWAG and say the next two days might have detected 1% more failures, which were already in the 5-10% range at most. So you triple your burnin expenses to avoid failing one system out of a thousand.
--
Infuriate left and right
Sell Hardware. Seems pretty simple.
Take away the difficult installation and you've overcome the biggest hurdle to mass conversions.
+&x
So far the company sounds promising, and penguin's website looks good.
:P)
(I know I didn't say much, but hey it's my first post, and at any rate, Ii had to prove that so far, somebody read this
I love deadlines. I like the "whoosh" sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams
Nice article; I wish all of the Linux hardware companies well.
Linux needs to be available pre-installed on computers available off-the-shelf at retail outlets for it to start invading the home in large numbers; a properly configured Linux box is not any harder to use than a Windows box.
After all, how many of your non-techie friends/family instlled their own copy of Windows? (As an example, Caldera is easier to install than Win98SE; reviews at my site)
Recently I showed a Mandrake installation running KDE to a friend of mine (who is a true dyed in wool Windows NT supporter / advocate) and his initial comment was: "It's just like Windows" - he had never previuosly evem tried to use a Linux box.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
Of course they mentioned the crappier of the BBS's he was a cosysop on back in the day. He was also cosysop of The Big Bang Burger Barn which was much much froopier.
The article would have been far more interesting if it had included some of the suspense surrounding his stalker over at VA who thinks Sam Ockman is behind every pro-Penguin testimonial on the Internet.
gotta agree with previous posters.
i have no idea why va is hiring hotshot linux developers. ted t'so and rasterman aren't going to get you a better linux box any faster or more reliably. va customers are going to foot the bill to pay for all that star power. va should save the r&d department for after they can actually process orders correctly.
It amazes me how many people are willing to pay a premium for VA and Penguin desktop boxes.
For large servers, maybe, but for rack systems or desktop machines, nearly any system with half-decent components will do. For flat out speed I can walk down to Fry's with a hardware compatibility list and throw together a box faster than I think either offers right now.
Added to which, now VA has all of these software developers in its employ, and VA customers will probably end up footing the bill to have Rasterman on staff, even though he really adds nothing material to their system.
Hardware companies would be better off following Dell's lead and specialize in inventory management, not window manager development.
> Penguin makes computers pre-installed with the
> Linux-based operating system
Damn, that is one politically correct way of putting it. Not "GNU/Linux," which pisses some people off, and not just "Linux," which pisses the other people off.
...service at Penguin would re-define the industry standards.
VA boxes have to sell at a premium just to make up for all the VC funding. They are growing way too fast and there are plenty of horror stories about orders slipping through the cracks. Then there is the extra money that must be made to cover all the time Chris DiBona spends posting on Slashdot about Sam Ockman when he should be working.
Penguin has really intrigued me, I gotta admit. Their systems aren't cheap but they are all made with quality hardware and work very well. Their "low end" systems are actually quite fast and they aren't really in the cheap home computer market so it isn't fair to compare them to the $500 linux systems you can buy these days.
The other big difference I see is that VA keeps adjusting their course to maximize profits (with everything else being secondary) while Penguin seems to kick back a lot to the community and they just happen to make good money doing it. Great contrast of how greed can screw up one company, and how another can avoid it and have fun while not necessarily growing as big.
...of South Park's corrupting influence! The first image you get after visiting the site are two penguins who have ignited their anal wind and are flying through the air under SATAN's influence! Beware!
:)
(or laugh
I would be curious to know, though, how many systems exhibit some sort of failure within that 24-72 hr window that Penguin tests in but VA doesn't. There's probably some statistical analysis you could use to determine if those extra 48 hrs are significant (would probably have to compare against units which failed within the warranty period, which is probably every one that has ever failed to this point).
If someone has had a poor experiene with VA or Penguin or anyone, they should be able to talk about it in here. What is "sleazy" about complaining about bad service or products? Are you so wrapped up in your linux lovefest that you can't understand that consumers have a right to talk too?
I managed to get my hands on a Dell Precision 410 with Redhat 6.0 pre-installed (I won the LinuxCare win-a-dell contest). I have to say, Dell did a nice job configuring it. It's all slicked up with xdm, so if you didn't want to, you'd never even see a command line. Hell, I bet even a kindergartener or an MCSE could administer this thing! Pre-installed Linux is most definitely a Good Thing for the community, I'd say.
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Funny how Alison Huynh mentions crossing the chasm, while I worker as an engineer for a speech recognition company, they hired those guys to come in and help them with their buisness plan. Going so far as to make all of us (engineers) go listen to that crap....
You can take on the gorilla, you just gotta catch him when he's not looking.
CrAzYjOn -Master Of Digital Chicanery
Sitting in front of me are 2 machines from Penguin Computing. All in all there good machines. My biggest issues with Pengin is SERVICE!!!! The computers were deliverd 2 1/2 weeks late, one monitor short, one secure web server short and no manuals for the SCSI card or tape drive. I also never got a detailed description of each computer I had purchased. (Even after asking them 3 times for them).
Calling for tech support was even more fun. I guess I thought they would have had a detailed description of each computer they had "Custom Built" for me, but now I just assume each order form must get tossed out a window after a computer is shipped. I was trying to get X working right and called to ask them to lookup and tell me what video card was in my computer, they had no idea who I was, or what type of computer I had purchased, even after giving them the serial number.
And if your interested, check out the technical support area on there site.
http://www.rightnowtech.com/cgi-bin/penguin?faq
WOW, a whole 11 questions.
I guess all I have to say is this baby penguin makes some nice hardware, but had better beef up on service if they want to play with the big penguins.
It seems to me that the Linux HW world is big enough for a lot of players, Penguin and VA included, but this sort of strange AC posting simply to slam competitors is just uncool.
On another note, VA has the volume of sales to be able to have people like Ted and Raster on staff and we feel it is our duty to hire people like them as otherwise, Linux is just some huge exploitation game, and we are not into that.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems.
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
This is a problem that Penguin had with thier vp, Alison as well, it's nothing new. All of the growing Linux companies have to deal with this.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
so get used to it.
of course, since you're #1 you have to assume everyone is gunning for you
I don't know why Penguin is so facsist about supporting only linux - FreeBSD shold be a perfectly acceptable platform to support.
Oh, I forgot that the Finnish Inquisition does not tolerate alternatives.
Dell has a history of slamming Unix and promoting NT. They are as committed to MSFT as you can get. MSFT wants GNU/Linux gone. Who needs friends like these? Dell will never get a penny from me.
...not hire people that don't add value to your product, charge less for your overpriced systems, and not have to worry at all about all the Sam Ockmans you seem to see around every corner.
Indelible Blue knows what service is all about. And their prices beat both Penguin and VA. Lots of Linux software, too.
...I work for one of the companies that Penguin is gunning against. I honestly think while my employer is huge, we don't have a chance in the Linux market selling machines against Penguin. We're too big to move that fast, any any real effort to sell Linux machines in huge volume will hurt other parts of our business.
When it came time for me to buy a dedicated Linux box instead of messing with this dual boot stuff, I called Penguin. Being in the business I can say that the components that Penguin uses offer no compromises (except for the IOMega drive, which Penguin says right up front is garbage but offered as a convenience to customers that really require it).
I'd love to post with my real name. But would Penguin hire me when my employer decides to can my ass for singing songs of praise against a competitor?