Slashdot Mirror
VA Linux Systems opening 10 new offices
tweek writes "Over at news.com , you can read a story about VA Linux Systems deciding to open offices in 10 other cities. " The story also talks about great revenue growth, and the potential for an up-coming IPO.
The minute I saw the "kernel tweaks" part, I could immediately guess that the response would have something to do with the GPL ;-)
You are supposed to pay sales tax on everything anyway - if you order from other states and do not pay it, you need to pay it when you do your state taxes at the end of the year.
That depends on what state you live in. Some states (Texas, South Dakota and Nevada for instance) have no 'state taxes'.
I know that where I live there is no mechanism in place to pay such taxes for private individuals (although I believe there is something called a 'use tax' for businesses). At any rate, nobody that I know of pays sales tax on interstate mail order.
I'm sorry, but I beg to differ with you on this. VA having their own distro would not do them, or the linux community, much good. VA has done a phenominal job helping to mainstream linux, and provide a (fairly) reliable source for hardware. I personally do not have any experience with purchasing from them, however I have recieved quite a few reccomendations from friends of mine.
VA has found a market where it was needed, and has filled that spot quite well. Diversification into the software market, especially by producing their own distro would add "yet another distro"(tm) to the market, and potentially weaken not only the growth potential of VA as a company, but linux as a whole.
Now before I get branded as flamebait, or anything else, I'd like to clarify a few items. First of, i am a linux user, advocate, and occassional code tweaker. I haven't done much, since my coding experience is somewhat limited, but I'm hoping to improve.
Now as to the though of "yet another distro"(tm) being a bad thing... in theory it would not be, every little bit of work on linux helps, but from the public perspective, seeing a new distro come out almost every other week can make some people scared. They worry about incompatibility (which really isn't an issue) and name loyalty. Any coders who would work to develop a new VA distro would probably be better of helping to improve one of the already existing distros.
I was going to add more, but I seemed to have misplaced my opinions.
-j
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
And I always thought Virginia was a whole state.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Recently I heard the following on CNBC (paraphrased from memory, but very close to what they said):
It really caught me off-guard, and left me wondering who you'd call the CEO of Linux (Linus, probably). They were talking about the CEO of VA Linux. They appear to have confused Linux the OS with VA Linux the company.
This makes me wonder how widespread this will be, particularly as VA Linux now runs http://linux.com/. I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm wary that their name change (from VA Research) could have been a ploy to co-opt the Linux world.
Sorry if I sound paranoid, but sometimes that's appropriate, especially in lucrative young sub-industry.
Maybe they can deliver faster this way
This isn't entirely a "good thing." I live in the state of New York. Now that VA has a presence in my state, I would have to pay sales tax on anything I purchase from them. At 7.25% this really hurts. Lately I prefer to "roll my own" systems, but this just eliminated any chance of me buying from them.
"VA is not in the distribution business We have our own load (based on Red Hat)"
According to the LinuxMandrake folks, you have a bonafide distribution:)
I believe a VALinux distribution could only benefit VALinux. As the number of distibutions is growing quite considerably, VALinux has the opportunity to grab Linux and become "the" distribution offering both Hardware and Software solutions, similiar to a Sun Microsystems. As the number of distributions continues to grow, I think it has a negative impact on potential customers. Customer's interested in Linux are not going to change their habits too much. VALinux has the opportunity to grab Workstation and MidLevel Server Market share from the likes of Sun, SGI, and MS.
As far as RedHat is concerned; the whole "Linux Portal" plan was blown when they failed to aquire the linux.com domain. RedHat Linux Software will probably not make it either. RedHat can make their distribution THE userfriendly distro, but there will always be someone to download all that hardwork, change the logo's, and ask Macmillan to distribute for $20 bucks less. All under the guise of "supporting linux".
I honestly don't think Linux will gain wide acceptance in the business world until a dominant player stands out, VALinux probably has the best chance of being that player (RedHat a close second depending on the choices they make). I personally would like to see Linux gain that acceptance, I would love to be able to use Linux at work, as opposed to just at home.
..but that's just my $0.00.
Awesome!
Note that these are _Sales Offices_, not development or production sites.
I would say they are being opened because that is how things are done in the business sales market to penetrate more markets. By that I mean the PHB's want to have 'local' sales and support staff to talk to.
I would also guess that these will become support hubs for 'large' support clients. So that they can do the "next day, onsite support" thing eventually.
If you had an idea how many résumés they receive,
you'd understand that they can't give feedback
to everyone
-- Word of the day: Percussive maintenance is the fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it wo
VA takes Red Hat, adds kernel patches, a desktop theme and a couple of other assorted items and burns it on a CD. This CD is shipped to the customer with their system so they can recover from any problems that might arise. This CD exists because it benefits VA and our customers. It allows us to have a higher degree of control over the drivers we ship and eliminates some of the guesswork for our support people. It gives the customer peak performance as well as a known state to restore from. Why would we bother if it didn't benefit anyone? We'd just download the current version of Red Hat, burn it on CDs and go with that.
This CD is not sold seperately. If you consider it a good value to buy a system so you can get this distribution on CD, then I guess VA sets the record for the most expensive version of the Linux O/S. (Buy our version of Linux for $2000 and get a free workstation!
The Mandrake folk are in the business of selling a boxed software product. VA is in the business of selling a boxed hardware product. Red Hat sells a boxed software product. When hardware == software then things will change.
LHS used to ship the boxed Red Hat CD along with a one-off with current updates and other packages our customers found useful. We could have pressed all of that on a single CD instead, but we still would not have been in the business of selling a software product. That's all we're doing at VA.
--Kit
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
I wonder how long it will be?
Good for them. They are probably going to outgrow RedHat but since they are not really in the same league I don't see that as a problem. ... Not that I will miss Debian but it looks like they will be pushed out of the game ( at least from the perspective of mainstream technical press )
With Linux commercial companies getting stronger and stronger I wonder what's going to happen to Debian and others
This is great, a Toronto office! Hopefully they will ship from Canada too, as the border duties/broker fees really suck!
I WANT PITTSBURGH.
Is Pittsburgh a New office place.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SAY YES I NEED A JOB SOOOOOOO BAAADDDDD..IM BROKE. I NEED MONEY...My computers are taking presidence over food this sucks. I need a job =(
I appreciate that there are limits to how a company can expand, but I'd love to see a branch in Europe. Anywhere'd do, but Ireland in particular. Actually, there's a huge building operation going on down the road from me, so if anyone from VA is reading this, I can give them directions.
I suspect it won't be long before Red Hat takes a big hit. They have not handled their growth very well, and VA is going to be a much hotter IPO. VA is already bigger and better, and growing much faster. They own linux.com, which already gets 10x as many hits as redhat.com (which is going downhill - the new site is AWFUL). All they need to do now is release their own distribution. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't want to do this. Having their own distribution will improve their mindshare and add more value to their brand name. Red Hat has also made the mistake of investing a lot of money in GNOME, and there's no way it's going to pay off for them. It used to be that I thought of Linux, the first company that came to mind was Red Hat. Now it's VA. It's unfortunate for Red Hat, but ultimately change is good.
Oh, and if I had hit submit 15 minutes ago: FIRST POST!
They mentioned in the news.com article only a few cities by name -- New York, Houston, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta.
What are the 4 other cities?
learn a decent OS and get a real job.
They are opening a Dallas office?!?
I wonder if it is possible for me to get a job with them.
I would do almost anything for it...
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
But unlike windows, i can give linux a facelift :P
get a grip. I highly doubt anyone but heins is opening anything but a car dealer in pittsburgh.
We have our own load (based on Red Hat) that has some kernel tweaks provided by our engineers to optimize performance on our systems. The only way you can get this version of Linux is with a VA system.
Ouch, you make that sound like a GPL violation! Before anybody flames them, they do appear to have the modified kernels on ftp.varesearch.com. Maybe you should have left off that last sentence?
I'd also like to say that VA has been doing great things to support the community. They're supporting a number of developers full time, and the services they provide through on.openprojects.net are just wonderful. Way to go, guys!
Maybe if you move to a real town (with a real football team) like Philadelphia you woudn't have such a problem ;-)
Have a Happy.
they'll actually give me some feedback on my resume. :(
Just wondering. Even Red Hat (who is, for now at least, much bigger) doesn't have offices in that many cities do they?
Just wondering...
Werd.
Well, one of my friends was in fact hired by VA a few weeks ago, but I guess his kitchen does not quite qualify as a fully-established VA Boston Office. These guys have been on a _serious_ hiring binge.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...