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LinuxOne Releases a Product
Andrew G. Feinberg noted that Linux Today has a bit about LinuxOne releasing something. They are no longer vaporware: 'Linux Lite' is a distribution, and its selling point is that it coexists with windows and doesn't require any partitioning. Definitely nice for the novice, but there sure is a lot of hype in that press release for what seems to amount to using umsdos and a bootloader that loads the kernel from under windows?
Well, Slack has done this as far back as I can remember (I think) and that's 2.2 -- I dunno what all the Big Whoop (TM) is about. I loved Slackware and that's how I got used to it. Only problem I ever had was that it was too slow that way. A novice, I suppose, might have difficulties. I didn't realize there had been novice umsdos distros before, though.
I know this is taboo, but how about running Linux under VMware for NT? I tried Linux for the first time this way a couple of weeks ago, and it works well, slowly but still entirely usable (my computer is a humble P200 though).
The virtual machine is completely isolated from the rest of the computer, so there's no fear of screwing up your computer as you learn to install and configure Linux. The fact that you can switch back to NT and scour the web for help as you grapple with the installation is a *very* big plus (setting up the network was the thing that took the most time to figure out).
I learned a lot from the experience -- if I do choose to install Linux for real, I'll be able to do so with much more confidence and experience than I did before.
And what is this system of theirs? It seems to be a Red Hat system that they installed on a hard disk using UMSDOS and LOADLIN, and then they copied the hard disk into a folder.
Folks, we need to get the message out that these are not responsible business people.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Given the history of scams among the founders of this gem, you might just want to watch that credit card, see if any "unexpected expenses" start turning up on it...
HTH,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Yet, I think that LinuxOne may just very well prove that if you're aiming on making a quick buck (LinuxOne wants to file for an IPO based on this, with no underwriters according to sources) on an open source product without actually committing to the open source community, you'll fail. Well, I hope that happens. From what the posts on linuxtoday state as well as from the Register's article, LinuxOne has done little or nothing apart from scratch out Red Hat's name and put in their own.
I don't dig that. I don't think the open source community digs that either. I don't think anyone will invest, and I hope that LinuxOne realizes that and either does something to benefit the community, or back out. I feel they're trying to make a marketing move, not a move to benefit the community. I'll admit, I haven't really benefitted the open source community myself all that much, I'm no hacker. Sysadmin, yes, hacker, no. Open source OSes, all the way. But at least I promote open source solutions at work to no end. While Red Hat's stuff is all open source, I don't believe it benefits the community if some company just takes those apps and re-packages them without doing anything for the community.
So, all I can hope for is that LinuxOne sets a precedent here. I hope they fail in their endeavor to make a quick buck simply because they haven't done anything for the community. I'm all for these IPOs. I'd like to see Red Hat do well. Same with the other companies like Caldera. Unfortunately, we can't survive without money, and the more people who make money doing what they love to do, the better. It doesn't have to be millions or billions, I sure as hell don't make that kind of cash, but at least I get to work in an environment I enjoy. I don't see anyting on LinuxOne's site that directly benefits the community, and I hope Wall Street and those other financial bally-wigs notice it too. If LinuxOne doesn't do something for Linux, why should they benefit from it?
sorry for the rant... too much whisky this evening...
look, they also have something called "linuxmac"L inuxMac
http://www.linuxone.net/products/products.html#
it looks kinda, um, dodgy. apparently will let you transfer files off a mac hard drive from linux. Wow!! They call it the "original solution in file transfer between Macintosh and Linux", which is a truly amazing statement to make since linux has supported HFS (and for that matter appletalk) for a long time. although it seems that the "linuxmac" thing is an actual program that moves files between drives within the program, kinda like the already-existing "linuxdisks" tool for mac, or the ancient pc->mac file converter way back in system 6 for that matter.. On the other hand, there are the already-existing linux HFS drivers where you can simply mount the mac cd/floppies as normal drives.. And which linuxone doesn't go to the bother of mentioning, although i'll bet they raided code from them.
Of course, it's possible that this linuxmac also does HFS+ drives (which would be a complete Godsend) but i seriously doubt it.
Considering the extreme lies-through-omission on this one small product, i doubt anything else linuxone says can be taken seriously..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I think it's still mirrored at cdrom.com, does pretty much the same thing, fits on four floppies, IRRC. My first install for Linux, didn't know much at the time.
Still, I thought it was pretty cool.
I've checked out a few other Linux-without-killing-your-drive distros before, like the ones previously featured on Slashdot (the names excape me as current...no, wait, one of them was winlinux). They didn't work very well, cruddy vidio, non-functional networking, etc... As a sysadmin for a Linux lab here at Drake University, the folks in our intro to programming course would really like to have Linux on their Wintel boxes simply to be able to telnet and have X and have it actually work, yet seem reluctant to repartition their entire drive to achive this.
Mayhaps this one might actually be decent enough to recommend to people.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Yet another Linux dist, has anybody been counting how many different types of Linux there are? I went to linux.org and it looked like they were missing a few. Is there a better site out there?
Its karma, Kramer.
although something deep inside me shudders at the thought of all these uber-newbie dists, it seems as though they are indeed helping people slowly along the road to linux.
:P
;)
i know a bunch of people who, after hearing me scream religiously about linux for months on end, want to try linux, but fear it a little and don't want to mess up their nice shiny windows machines. i can think of about a dozen people offhand that i know who are using the winlinux-ish thinghies as a "safe" method of testing the waters of linux without going through a full blown install/partition/mess-up/reinstall/etc.
i'm still not entirely sure if this is a Good Thing (tm) or not, but i don't think it'll be too harmful as long as we keep assuring those we know that it's not quite the real thing and not nearly as exciting as doing a "real" install
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
Have you ever wanted a linux distribution so simple you didn't even need to use a mouse? A linux distribution so simple even a lobotomized flatworm could understand it's installation instructions? Presenting.... LinuxNULL(tm)(r)(c)!
Package includes a CD packed using our patented ReMark technology. Now you can have 100% file compression /without/ the wait! Also includes 1 year of free support courtesy of the Benevolent Operators For Helplines. If you act now we'll also include a special-edition doll of Richard Stallman, creator of "that other movement"! No longer do you need to step your l^Husers through a long and tedious install - with our patented RM technology you'll wipe out all the problems those other operating systems have.
--
This is actually their second product release from what I can see, their first being the somewhat unpopular xclock2000.
From the press release: "Xclock2000 shows our committment to the Linux community by providing the clock necessary to finally bring Linux to the desktop. Features such as 7 independant clock arms, multi-threading and expanded support for the times 2:30 and 7:15 finally bring the concept of clock to the 21st century."
The Linuxone IPO, scheduled for next week, is expected to bring in over $75 to the company. Money the company says will be used to expand their product line in the area of "weed, cocaine or something like that."
Hotnutz.com
Frankly, I'm appalled, and hope this company lurches painfully to bankruptcy, leaving its owners to panhandle while struggling to control untreatable, horribly *slow* disorders of their connective tissue... and may ten thousand camels run rampant through their houses, as well.
But then, I'm an obnoxious opinonated, vindictive b*stard at times. {evil grin}
As others have noted, there's a remarkably informative "Register" article, with perhaps the one oddity that instead of mooching directly off of RedHat, the *few* *all-binary* packages that they've made available for FTP all bear tell-tale "mdk.i586.rpm" extensions, as far as I can tell.
"The Company's extensions to the Linux software kernel will rapidly distinguish its products from all other available Linux software"... well, er, it's GPLed. If it's good, the patches can be used by others. If it's not... needing an eye-patch or a dialysis machine is distinctive, too.
There's also no mention of the licensing on their FTP site, as far as I can tell -- which, according to Netcraft, runs RH.
Their documents on the web site are badly-written and inconsistent. Parts glorify (?!) the ability to work w/o partitioning, while the latter stage figures prominently in their installation instructions... Perhaps that's their "full" LinuxOne OS, and not "Lite", 'tho.
Their web site *strongly* implies that most of the features are *their* features, and not common to most distros.
"Most useful and complete"? Um, no; not unless you're shipping a multiple-CD collection.
"No lost data, no confusion, and no chance for a disk drive disaster"? How, precisely, does *sharing* an existing partition with an OS that is not designed to coexist, and thus can manipulate the filesystem at will, promote stability? Argh. If you want stability, you *isolate* things. Not funky multi-function boards; not strange combos of OSes and filesystems; and so forth. If it dies one day, who's to blame -- Windows file corruption? LinuxOne? The foibles of a novice?
"Simply type 'reboot'" -- are they dropping people into a root shell, without any mention of normal user accounts?
...and, for the Mac...
"All functions available through the computer's mouse."
Right. So, write a Perl5 module for parsing and comparing Bayes Nets, using a single-button mouse.
'cuse me while I go chortling hideously into the night...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
...so the "ease of use" tack that LinuxOne is taking just might the the key that makes them cash.
/. community get pumped about Linux growing and becoming more accepted. It appears that LinuxOne is doing their part to help Linux make it further on the desktop level.
So, having said that, I'm confused. First off, let me say that I am (gasp) not a Linux user. Sorry. I'm too enmeshed in the Windows world to put up with the trouble of dual booting all the time.
All I've seen here is folks bashing LinuxOne. I've been reading Slashdot for about 2 years now, and have always seen the
We all know that the vast majority of computer users are somewhat intimidated by Linux. Installation reviews that appear are contradictory - some installs go smoothly and easily, and some seem to go poorly. A person who is considering installing Linux, just to "see what all the hype is about" just might do that, simply because of the spin that LinuxOne is putting on their distro. Granted, it's nothing new, but hell folks - what in this world is new? Look around and see what new and fancy items that appear are just the same old thing with a new little twist.
Tech businesses today have a difficult job - the world is full of niches, and the easiest to fill are those that complement a larger niche. Riding the wave of success of another product is far easier than creating a whole new "next big thing". LinuxOne is attempting to do that. They may have a history of vaporware in the past, but there's a distro now, and it looks to me like it could really help Linux at the desktop level. It might not be anything "new", but success is largely marketing and spin, and LinuxOne seems to have that under control.
This LinuxLite may just be the next big thing - who, at this point, can really tell?
Unlike LinuxONE, which requires WINDOZE, our new and MUCH IMPROVED LINUX-ZERO requires NOTHING !!
Yeah, you read it right, NOTHING.
Our LINUX-ZERO is SO ADVANCE, it exists EVERYWHERE and yet it requires NOTHING to run on, and it produces ABSOLUTELY NO SIDE EFFECT !!!
Want to test drive our NEW AND IMPROVED LINUX-ZERO?
Here is the way you do it: Look around, and then smile.
Yeah, SMILE, DAMMIT !!
That will sure bring our LINUX-ZERO out. Because our LINUX-ZERO is made for one thing in mind - to BRING HAPPINESS TO ALL !
By the next millennium, we will bring out our LINUX-MINUS-ONE, which will be EVEN MORE FANTASTIC !!!
Just wait and see.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
In order for RHAT to start talking about developing further software, they had to get hundreds of millions of dollars invested, and waste considerable time planning.
In contrast, LinuxOne has moved rapidly to deploy the results of the $250 that they raised.
They have clearly achieved their goal of unchallenged availability of applications and platform support, which no other IP has been able to accomplish.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
having pored throught their web page, I don't believe linuxone runs _under_ windows at all. It's not a VMware-like thing at all. They just are installing into c:\linux, or some such, and using loadlin to boot linux from there... slackware has been doing this forever. Also I know someone who has one of their disks, and It's apparently a repackaged redhat, with the name linuxone replacing redhat where ever it shows up....
a bunch of poop
dronf!
heh, try going to linuxone.net, where the company's page is.
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