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Intel Invests in TurboLinux
OUSpirit writes "I saw this over at Netscape's Technews site. Evidently, Intel (and some other companies) just invested some major bucks in TurboLinux to put them on more equal footing with RedHat. They plan to use the money to expand management and development staff.
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What else would you expect out of Intel?
There's rampant worry about the ability of MS to
produce a working 64-bit windows, and while the
IA32 has served intell well for some time, the
wave of the future is 64 bit. The best way to
ensure the availability of working OSes is to
fund their production.
Plus, there's that all-your-eggs-in-one-basket
thing.
They say they want to add proprietary software into their distro. I don't know if I like the sound of that. I guess it really depends how they do it, but in theory they can create a distro that's dysfunctional without a couple of proprietary components of theirs, and then say "well, sure, you can download all the GPL'd stuff from our site - it just won't work."
It's more likely that they're refering to adding stuff like word perfect. In that case it's ok, redhat does the same, but redhat's commitment to GPL the stuff they write makes me a lot more comfortable.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
Someone already stated that, for Japanese and Chinese Market. Turbo-Linux is the market leader in Japan and Mainland China.
Non-MS product is quite acceptable in Japan Market. Such as Mac and OS/2 still survive in Japan.
Will Intel finaly take the gloves of with M$ and show them that the world does not revolve around Redmond?
Both Microsoft and Intel hate the concept of "wintel", even though Microsoft is 99% dependant on Intel systems and Intel is 90% dependant on Microsoft systems.
Another thing they both have in common is the lust for the high profit datacenter market owned by IBM, Sun, and HP. The difference is, since Microsoft dropped Alpha, they are totally dependant on Intel to get them there. (Not that NT-on-Alpha was selling well, which may also will be the case for NT-on-I64.) Intel, on the other hand, looks to be betting heavily on Unix to sell the super-high-margin systems.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
A good guess as to why Intel is investing in linux can be seen in the painful extension of the x86 architecture long after it should have died a quiet death. Really, folks, it's 20 years old, and there are far better ways to do things (witness Power PC vs x86 benchmarks) than to keep compatibility with the same old opcodes.
The _only_ reason that x86 survives is backward compatibility with *DOS*. With Linux, and other OSes like it, it's much *easier* to port the old OS to the new processor than it is to build a processor that is backward compatible. Note that Linux _already_ runs in the Merced simulator (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Win2k *doesnt*.
Micro~1 has had a vested interest in bullying Intel into keeping the x86 architecture, since they're experts at writing assembler and not at writing portable operating systems. However, Linux presents a way out of this trap, and _that_ is why Intel likes Linux.
Turbo Linux (Japanese), through my sad personal experience.
I am not GPL zealot but I think they should be a little bit kind to GPL community since they are benefited from GPL in many ways.
If you down load their "#1 status" Japanese version of TL distribution from their ftp, you will be comfortably surprised how fast their ftp servers are. (Reality: very few even bother to download because cheap high speed connection is still rare thing for most Japanese thanks to its stupid government and monopoly telephone company.) Good start for me. But when installation starts, I was annoyed to find out their distribution has intentionally broken X-system.
Their excuse is True type fonts they use are commercial software and thus excluded from FTP version. Japanese use over 1000 character fonts. Creating new font system is not trivial. So this excuse may sound OK. But Debian already has free true type included so they do not resort to be like this blatant broken distribution just to get by GPL. It looks like they do this just to charge for the software (over $100 per copy), important of which they get free from GPL/BSD community. Another concern I have is that it is practically impossible to copy and share this distribution due to tangled copyright position of each software components. With good money made with expensive distribution without even an installation support in the old days, they could have donated Japanese free true type font.
Whatever the wording in GPL/BSD, spirit is community. Being a member of community, they can not take-take. It has to be give-and-take. If they want to combine commercial software to Linux distribution, I ask them to do it kindly and nicely. I think similar type of consideration must be made by Corel people. If any Linux distributor makes enhancement to core part of distribution, they have to give back to community. If these are not done, GPL community may have to resort to introduce new restrictive rules on distribution.
Last note: my personal experience of old TL 2.0 Pro was miserable. No installation support and priced over $100. True type font and simple word processor was the only significant commercial software bundled. I decided never to purchase CD from them.