Sleazy to make baseless anonymous claims.
by
Eric+Green
·
· Score: 2
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:more support for funky devices
by
Eric+Green
·
· Score: 2
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
by
Eric+Green
·
· Score: 2
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.
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.
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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.
-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.
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.