Sun is dropping Sun Linux 5.0, but not Sun Linux as a product in general. We never did much to the base Red Hat 7.2 distribution, but we did -just- enough to cause people to worry about it being "proprietary". So from now on we will not modify the base distribution, but rather layer added value on top.
Read the other posts in this thread... or just hit my user page and read my last 4 or 5 posts... I think everything has been fairly well clarified.
There was no reason to run it on non-Sun hardware. If you didn't have Sun hardware, you could run Red Hat 7.2 and, with the exception of a few pieces of added software, have the same system.
The idea of rebranding was 2-fold:
* To have a distribution that was guarranteed to run on the LX50 with extreme compatibility with Red Hat 7.2 (one of the most common distributions at that time)
* To start from that base and begin to incorporate optimizations for the hardware and value-added software. This phase never really happened as market inertia against a Sun rebranded Linux set in.
Sun will still add value via software, but will do it on top of the exsting distributions rather than modifying the distributions. This means that all the value that would have required you to run Sun Linux in the future will now be available to you without you having to run a new distribution.
Re:If they're leaving the Linux market
on
Sun Drops Linux Distro
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· Score: 5, Informative
Sun's not dropping Red Hat. We're dropping the modification and rebranding of Red Hat. The article, if you read it, states that the hope is to ship -actual- Red Hat (and other distros) products on Sun x86 hardware (rather than rebranding it Sun Linux and dealing with all the hassles that takes).
And, being a Gentoo user myself as well as a Sun employee, I can say I've heard almost nothing about Gentoo internally with regards to Solaris -or- Linux. Not to say there might not be a group I don't work with that has learned to love the Gentoo like I do, but in every case that I've talked to someone about it, I had to explain what it was.
Sun -is- focusing on LSB compliance, both for Linux (which can be accomplished by using LSB compliant distributions) and for future parts of Solaris.
But as far as the idea of compiling packages from source like with Gentoo, when it comes to Solaris on SPARC, there is almost no reason to do this. One of the beauties of the SPARC platform is the backwards compatibility. If you have that compatibility, and you have known quantities for system configuration, you don't need to compile from source, it just steals cycles from your customers.
This has zilch to do with the appliances. There will never be a Sun Cobalt appliance running Solaris x86. Sun Linux never ran on the Cobalt boxes to begin with. The Cobalt boxes have a tailored distribution with added software for the GUI. Sun Linux is essentially Red Hat 7.2 in almost all respects and does not have the Cobalt-like GUI. Very different beasts.
I work for one of the groups specifically involved in this...
To be clear, since the title of the original article and this/. article are a bit misleading (IMO):
Sun will:
* Continue to offer Linux as an offering on x86-based servers. These offerings will come in the form of standard distributions that everyone today knows and loves.
* Continue to develop x86 Linux hardware offerings. Currently stocked by the LX50 (released last year) and the Cobalt appliances (where I originally came from). Coming up there are a number of things due out by the end of the year. I'm not going to cover them now so that I can keep my job:)
* Continue to add software value on top of the Linux distribution by making various Sun softwares (like Star Office, Sun ONE, Java, etc) run ever better on the Linux platforms....
The only thing that Sun is not continuing is the customized Sun Linux 5.0 line. Anyone who took a close look at SL5 knows that it is virtually identical to Red Hat Linux 7.2 (in fact, you can even use Red Hat Network or Ximian Red Carpet to update with RH72 patches, though at that point it's not considered SL5 by Sun).
The only differences from RH72 were a modified installer (and some might say broken, since it had problems with Kickstarting), some custom Sun labelling, and value-added software (like the Sun Streaming server).
What is being "killed" is the modification of the base distribution... in other words, the installer whatever distributions Sun chooses to ship will be the same installer that you get when downloading that distro from it's main website, and the graphics you see during install, etc will be the same as well. We are continuing to layer above and beyond that with things like Sun ONE, etc....
In other words, not much has changed except now Sun does not have to go and recertify drivers (that already worked perfectly well) or try to explain why Sun Linux is NOT a proprietary closed Linux (which many people seemed to think even though it was not so). Now we can concentrate on providing software value add above the base distros, which are already maturing quite well on their own....
This doesn't mean Sun has abandoned Linux or Open Source. The worst it means is that when a Sun engineer creates a patch (for example, on the kernel) that it has to be submitted either to the distro parent and/or the maintainer of that software before it will make it into the core of a Sun Linux product offering. That should be considered a good thing by most people in the community, as it further confirms that Sun is contributing and not closing off any open code.
["We" in the following is whoever you want "us" to be... ]
We most definitely know that we are not the center of the Universe... MS has proven this quite well time after time. The fact that Mozilla is doing this is PROOF that we aren't since if we had our choice, most of us would rather see ActiveX die in favor of more open choices and possibly even Java.
I won't care if ActiveX is in Mozilla -too- much as long as it can be disabled from loading and bloating my memory footprint even further. I've lived without ActiveX for years, I don't need to change it.
Workstation != "Desktop"... Sun Microsystems sells Sun Blade "Workstations" (and, if you want to talk about about thin clients as Desktops, SunRays as "Desktops", but it doesn't fit where I see Red Hat going). Most companies use x86 boxes with Windows as Desktops.
Red Hat's current product and pricing for WS is targetted at the higher end of the curve... but the meat of the market is at the feature-limited-but-extreme-ease-of-use low end.
This is a market above what I am thinking of with a Desktop product. A desktop product would be more geared for remote administration, locked down applications, simplified configuration options. It is a move in that direction but not yet a corporate Windows desktop killer.
Red Hat's opinion on all of this (and since the company I work for is in a business relationship with them, I am quite certain of this) is that if you want a stable, long-supported system (ie, a server), use their Enterprise Server or Advanced Server editions.
The base distro (ie, RH 8.0) is meant for desktop and/or hobby and/or low cost use. They will continue to use it as a testbed, updating and changing things (ie, possibly breaking them) for quite awhile until they have a -good- corporate desktop environment. Because of this, it is a nightmare to support the base distro very long.
[my opinion:] I would conjecture that in 18-36 months you will see Red Hat create a Red Hat Corporate Desktop Edition or something similar, which also has extended support possibilites and, like Enterprise and Advanced Server, is not a free download. I don't expect the base distro to ever go away, but people need to realize that is their testbed, not their bread and butter.
Folks who read/. and download the latest+greatest when it becomes available and proceed to hack the distro in some way are never going to pay Red Hat the money needed to innovate server or corporate desktop features. However, they form a terrific symbiotic partner, getting a free distro and Red Hat getting extreme stress testing.
And if someone doesn't like the things Red Hat does with the desktop and/or does not like the short-term focus Red Hat gives the base distribution, there are MANY other choices to go with.
I'm definitely not happy about the series ending so abrupbtly, but in a lot of ways I think this was a terrific season finale. It tied up the needed loose ends well.
Even the ending I can deal with... a tragic ending is just as valid as a happy one. Since we have enough happy endings, this provided a MUCH more memorable end. The feelings I felt at the end of the episode were as strong as the ending of a good book.
The only thing that killed it for me was the following:
* To be continued... couldn't they have edited that out? It -felt- like a series ending until that. Hell, with John "dead" as it appears at the ending, it even explains why we don't hear about him ever again.
* That insipid "The SciFi channel thanks..." blah blah... an obvious attempt to seem gracious about the show to we fans who wanted it to continue. SciFi would have done very well to have not even mentioned it. If they were that thankful, the show would still be on. SCREW them.
As others have mentioned, all I have left from SciFi is SG1 and originals like Children of Dune and Riverworld (I hope). SG1 will probably be gone after next season, so that's one more. I hope they at least do more originals, but lordy, they can't be THAT much cheaper than a good story-based series. Otherwise, SciFi is dead to me.
I agreed with those feelings too, until I found a number of worthwhile persistent worlds (the one I played the most being Nordock). These brought me back to my MUDing days and were quite fun.
I'll agree with this. I FF through most commercial blocks and I still notice who the ad belonged to. If it was clever I'll even back up and watch it. This means I recognize the ads alot MORE than before TiVo, when I would regularly surf other programs when a commercial block came on. Heck, TiVo is -helping- them advertise to me in that way.
I'm just waiting until someone clever, like TiVo or another PVR company, creates a commercial that is running in/60 slow-motion so that PVR viewers see it in real-time;)
2 cases of windows-specifism I've had to deal with.
The Xerox WC385 I got from work (funny thing that, since my job at the time was with a Linux server appliance company that has since been consumed) was windows only. Absolutely no non-Windows drivers and no support for standard printer protocols.
The Adaptec 7902 has drivers for many OSes, but they have a special hardware RAID mode (RAID 0 or 1 only, but often good enough) that they only support in their Windows driver. A real pain since the product we are using this in is for a company that is never going to market Windows features, yet customers ask us why the competition (using the same Adaptec chips) has this feature as a give-away and we tell them to buy a RAID card.
Yes, but there's no centralized MAC address authority. I've heard of others who have come across identical MACs on a network.
And yes, if you have an OS like Linux (probably *BSD, etc) you can tell the driver to change your MAC address. A pain, but possible. My 802.11b+ethernet router comes with a web interface that lets you do the same (they call it "MAC cloning") so that if you have registered your MAC with your ISP (many broadband ISPs bind to your MAC before allowing traffic from your IP) you can change your equipment without having to call your ISP and have your MAC updated in their database.
Yeah, the domain name/site name isn't very well thought out. OSXvsXP or OSXvsWinXP would have been better. I assumed it was going to be about X11+Linux versus Windows XP. I didn't even think of OSX until I hit the site and couldn't find anything relevant to X11 there. Then I noticed the Jaguar logo.
Ouch, point taken:) Socially and technically, yes, I would agree.
However when speaking commercially (and that is the area I meant to talk about), not from my experiences over the last few years marketing Linux appliances and general purpose servers.
Admittedly, I'm skewed by being in the US, but the markets I work with in the US have adopted Linux commercially between 1-2 years faster than in those I have worked with in the EMEA. Though, once adopted, the EMEA folks seem to have a much stronger relationship (loyalty) with their chosen partners.
Not necessarily. If anyone has the lawyers capable of making SCO's infringement claim stick, it would be Microsoft. $1B isn't complete chump-change (even to them), especially as that's only IBM, and if it would hurt their competition, I could Microsoft doing it. Don't forget that patents (and their infringements) would transfer in an aquisition.
In my opinion, if SCO -isn't- looking for a buy-out, they're nuts. They don't have clout in the market anymore and they probably don't have the coffers needed to pursue these infringements. I'm not saying I agree with their claims, but if they are looking to get bought, it's a proven strategy to build up a portfolio of cases and then sell off to someone with more muscle.
Alot of car audio stores sell dash-mounted DVD players that have a screen like what you are talking about. Often times the screen module is in a separate case from the radio.
You might be able to rig a setup where you get one of the car screens and connect it to a video card that has Svideo or component video out.
Not as high resolution as a VGA LCD (though who knows, maybe they have a VGA interface on some models, doubt it though), but you'll be using an alternate signal source, meaning your SVGA port will still be open, and it will look smooth with you press the button to deploy the screen;)...
This brings up a segue into a feature I really wish laptop makers would provide. I travel alot and use my laptop as a terminal in a NOC sometimes. I would really like an SVGA -input- and PS2/USB dongle on my laptop so I could use the laptop monitor/keyboard/screen as a terminal for another computer. If this were a fairly common possibility, people like the article's author probably wouldn't need to resort to weird things like built-in screens.
It's sad. John Ashcroft is the first person I've ever had spawn the words "Fascist Fuck" spontaneously in my head when seeing his image on sites like this. Normally I am a pretty level-headed guy. I think if you measured my autonomic responses, I would register more of a reaction to Ashcroft for than Saddam.
Between things like this and the Patriot Act parts I and the soon to be released part II, this administration has been the most un-American in office since the anti-communist folks in the 50's.
I fully believe that unless the modchip affects someone -elses- hardware, modifying hardware I own should be legal, especially if my use is to do something like run Linux... if I then do something illegal like piracy or service theft with the modchip, punish that action, not the ownership of the modchip... it should be no more illegal than having IP connectivity (which also enables software piracy if you want to take it to one possible logical conclusion).
And before some idiot tries to subpoena my IP address to come search my house, my PS2 is not modified and I long ago (4-5 years) killed my software piracy habit in favor of free software. Just because I'm abiding by the law doesn't mean I agree with the way our current government tries to enforce the law and pass new (unconstitional in some cases) ones.
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Sun is dropping Sun Linux 5.0, but not Sun Linux as a product in general. We never did much to the base Red Hat 7.2 distribution, but we did -just- enough to cause people to worry about it being "proprietary". So from now on we will not modify the base distribution, but rather layer added value on top.
... or just hit my user page and read my last 4 or 5 posts ... I think everything has been fairly well clarified.
Read the other posts in this thread
Still in the works ... the Hatter's not dead.
Until specs are announced, not much to be said.
There was no reason to run it on non-Sun hardware. If you didn't have Sun hardware, you could run Red Hat 7.2 and, with the exception of a few pieces of added software, have the same system.
The idea of rebranding was 2-fold:
* To have a distribution that was guarranteed to run on the LX50 with extreme compatibility with Red Hat 7.2 (one of the most common distributions at that time)
* To start from that base and begin to incorporate optimizations for the hardware and value-added software. This phase never really happened as market inertia against a Sun rebranded Linux set in.
Sun will still add value via software, but will do it on top of the exsting distributions rather than modifying the distributions. This means that all the value that would have required you to run Sun Linux in the future will now be available to you without you having to run a new distribution.
Sun's not dropping Red Hat. We're dropping the modification and rebranding of Red Hat. The article, if you read it, states that the hope is to ship -actual- Red Hat (and other distros) products on Sun x86 hardware (rather than rebranding it Sun Linux and dealing with all the hassles that takes).
And, being a Gentoo user myself as well as a Sun employee, I can say I've heard almost nothing about Gentoo internally with regards to Solaris -or- Linux. Not to say there might not be a group I don't work with that has learned to love the Gentoo like I do, but in every case that I've talked to someone about it, I had to explain what it was.
Sun -is- focusing on LSB compliance, both for Linux (which can be accomplished by using LSB compliant distributions) and for future parts of Solaris.
But as far as the idea of compiling packages from source like with Gentoo, when it comes to Solaris on SPARC, there is almost no reason to do this. One of the beauties of the SPARC platform is the backwards compatibility. If you have that compatibility, and you have known quantities for system configuration, you don't need to compile from source, it just steals cycles from your customers.
This has zilch to do with the appliances. There will never be a Sun Cobalt appliance running Solaris x86. Sun Linux never ran on the Cobalt boxes to begin with. The Cobalt boxes have a tailored distribution with added software for the GUI. Sun Linux is essentially Red Hat 7.2 in almost all respects and does not have the Cobalt-like GUI. Very different beasts.
I work for one of the groups specifically involved in this ...
/. article are a bit misleading (IMO):
:)
...
... in other words, the installer whatever distributions Sun chooses to ship will be the same installer that you get when downloading that distro from it's main website, and the graphics you see during install, etc will be the same as well. We are continuing to layer above and beyond that with things like Sun ONE, etc. ...
...
To be clear, since the title of the original article and this
Sun will:
* Continue to offer Linux as an offering on x86-based servers. These offerings will come in the form of standard distributions that everyone today knows and loves.
* Continue to develop x86 Linux hardware offerings. Currently stocked by the LX50 (released last year) and the Cobalt appliances (where I originally came from). Coming up there are a number of things due out by the end of the year. I'm not going to cover them now so that I can keep my job
* Continue to add software value on top of the Linux distribution by making various Sun softwares (like Star Office, Sun ONE, Java, etc) run ever better on the Linux platforms.
The only thing that Sun is not continuing is the customized Sun Linux 5.0 line. Anyone who took a close look at SL5 knows that it is virtually identical to Red Hat Linux 7.2 (in fact, you can even use Red Hat Network or Ximian Red Carpet to update with RH72 patches, though at that point it's not considered SL5 by Sun).
The only differences from RH72 were a modified installer (and some might say broken, since it had problems with Kickstarting), some custom Sun labelling, and value-added software (like the Sun Streaming server).
What is being "killed" is the modification of the base distribution
In other words, not much has changed except now Sun does not have to go and recertify drivers (that already worked perfectly well) or try to explain why Sun Linux is NOT a proprietary closed Linux (which many people seemed to think even though it was not so). Now we can concentrate on providing software value add above the base distros, which are already maturing quite well on their own.
This doesn't mean Sun has abandoned Linux or Open Source. The worst it means is that when a Sun engineer creates a patch (for example, on the kernel) that it has to be submitted either to the distro parent and/or the maintainer of that software before it will make it into the core of a Sun Linux product offering. That should be considered a good thing by most people in the community, as it further confirms that Sun is contributing and not closing off any open code.
Run Windows?
... ]
... MS has proven this quite well time after time. The fact that Mozilla is doing this is PROOF that we aren't since if we had our choice, most of us would rather see ActiveX die in favor of more open choices and possibly even Java.
Want ActiveX?
Run friggin Explorer!
["We" in the following is whoever you want "us" to be
We most definitely know that we are not the center of the Universe
I won't care if ActiveX is in Mozilla -too- much as long as it can be disabled from loading and bloating my memory footprint even further. I've lived without ActiveX for years, I don't need to change it.
But I am disagreeing with your post :)
... Sun Microsystems sells Sun Blade "Workstations" (and, if you want to talk about about thin clients as Desktops, SunRays as "Desktops", but it doesn't fit where I see Red Hat going). Most companies use x86 boxes with Windows as Desktops.
... but the meat of the market is at the feature-limited-but-extreme-ease-of-use low end.
Workstation != "Desktop"
Red Hat's current product and pricing for WS is targetted at the higher end of the curve
This is a market above what I am thinking of with a Desktop product. A desktop product would be more geared for remote administration, locked down applications, simplified configuration options. It is a move in that direction but not yet a corporate Windows desktop killer.
Red Hat's opinion on all of this (and since the company I work for is in a business relationship with them, I am quite certain of this) is that if you want a stable, long-supported system (ie, a server), use their Enterprise Server or Advanced Server editions.
/. and download the latest+greatest when it becomes available and proceed to hack the distro in some way are never going to pay Red Hat the money needed to innovate server or corporate desktop features. However, they form a terrific symbiotic partner, getting a free distro and Red Hat getting extreme stress testing.
The base distro (ie, RH 8.0) is meant for desktop and/or hobby and/or low cost use. They will continue to use it as a testbed, updating and changing things (ie, possibly breaking them) for quite awhile until they have a -good- corporate desktop environment. Because of this, it is a nightmare to support the base distro very long.
[my opinion:]
I would conjecture that in 18-36 months you will see Red Hat create a Red Hat Corporate Desktop Edition or something similar, which also has extended support possibilites and, like Enterprise and Advanced Server, is not a free download. I don't expect the base distro to ever go away, but people need to realize that is their testbed, not their bread and butter.
Folks who read
And if someone doesn't like the things Red Hat does with the desktop and/or does not like the short-term focus Red Hat gives the base distribution, there are MANY other choices to go with.
I'm definitely not happy about the series ending so abrupbtly, but in a lot of ways I think this was a terrific season finale. It tied up the needed loose ends well.
... a tragic ending is just as valid as a happy one. Since we have enough happy endings, this provided a MUCH more memorable end. The feelings I felt at the end of the episode were as strong as the ending of a good book.
... couldn't they have edited that out? It -felt- like a series ending until that. Hell, with John "dead" as it appears at the ending, it even explains why we don't hear about him ever again.
..." blah blah ... an obvious attempt to seem gracious about the show to we fans who wanted it to continue. SciFi would have done very well to have not even mentioned it. If they were that thankful, the show would still be on. SCREW them.
Even the ending I can deal with
The only thing that killed it for me was the following:
* To be continued
* That insipid "The SciFi channel thanks
As others have mentioned, all I have left from SciFi is SG1 and originals like Children of Dune and Riverworld (I hope). SG1 will probably be gone after next season, so that's one more. I hope they at least do more originals, but lordy, they can't be THAT much cheaper than a good story-based series. Otherwise, SciFi is dead to me.
I agreed with those feelings too, until I found a number of worthwhile persistent worlds (the one I played the most being Nordock). These brought me back to my MUDing days and were quite fun.
I'll agree with this. I FF through most commercial blocks and I still notice who the ad belonged to. If it was clever I'll even back up and watch it. This means I recognize the ads alot MORE than before TiVo, when I would regularly surf other programs when a commercial block came on. Heck, TiVo is -helping- them advertise to me in that way.
/60 slow-motion so that PVR viewers see it in real-time ;)
I'm just waiting until someone clever, like TiVo or another PVR company, creates a commercial that is running in
2 cases of windows-specifism I've had to deal with.
The Xerox WC385 I got from work (funny thing that, since my job at the time was with a Linux server appliance company that has since been consumed) was windows only. Absolutely no non-Windows drivers and no support for standard printer protocols.
The Adaptec 7902 has drivers for many OSes, but they have a special hardware RAID mode (RAID 0 or 1 only, but often good enough) that they only support in their Windows driver. A real pain since the product we are using this in is for a company that is never going to market Windows features, yet customers ask us why the competition (using the same Adaptec chips) has this feature as a give-away and we tell them to buy a RAID card.
*sigh*
Yes, but there's no centralized MAC address authority. I've heard of others who have come across identical MACs on a network.
And yes, if you have an OS like Linux (probably *BSD, etc) you can tell the driver to change your MAC address. A pain, but possible. My 802.11b+ethernet router comes with a web interface that lets you do the same (they call it "MAC cloning") so that if you have registered your MAC with your ISP (many broadband ISPs bind to your MAC before allowing traffic from your IP) you can change your equipment without having to call your ISP and have your MAC updated in their database.
Well, there is, but I don't usually mention such things ... unless I'm posting as an AC ...
Actually, shouldn't you be looking for a machine that will drink it for you? Maybe a garbage disposal with a VBScript engine?
Yeah, the domain name/site name isn't very well thought out. OSXvsXP or OSXvsWinXP would have been better. I assumed it was going to be about X11+Linux versus Windows XP. I didn't even think of OSX until I hit the site and couldn't find anything relevant to X11 there. Then I noticed the Jaguar logo.
Ouch, point taken :) Socially and technically, yes, I would agree.
However when speaking commercially (and that is the area I meant to talk about), not from my experiences over the last few years marketing Linux appliances and general purpose servers.
Admittedly, I'm skewed by being in the US, but the markets I work with in the US have adopted Linux commercially between 1-2 years faster than in those I have worked with in the EMEA. Though, once adopted, the EMEA folks seem to have a much stronger relationship (loyalty) with their chosen partners.
Linux is also quite big in the EMEA regions ... doing something to damage Linux is only going to further lower SCO's pull in those markets.
The EMEA markets tend to lag the US by about a year for trends like this. I would expect that in 2-3 years SCO's influence there will be minimized.
Not necessarily. If anyone has the lawyers capable of making SCO's infringement claim stick, it would be Microsoft. $1B isn't complete chump-change (even to them), especially as that's only IBM, and if it would hurt their competition, I could Microsoft doing it. Don't forget that patents (and their infringements) would transfer in an aquisition.
In my opinion, if SCO -isn't- looking for a buy-out, they're nuts. They don't have clout in the market anymore and they probably don't have the coffers needed to pursue these infringements. I'm not saying I agree with their claims, but if they are looking to get bought, it's a proven strategy to build up a portfolio of cases and then sell off to someone with more muscle.
Alot of car audio stores sell dash-mounted DVD players that have a screen like what you are talking about. Often times the screen module is in a separate case from the radio.
;) ...
You might be able to rig a setup where you get one of the car screens and connect it to a video card that has Svideo or component video out.
Not as high resolution as a VGA LCD (though who knows, maybe they have a VGA interface on some models, doubt it though), but you'll be using an alternate signal source, meaning your SVGA port will still be open, and it will look smooth with you press the button to deploy the screen
This brings up a segue into a feature I really wish laptop makers would provide. I travel alot and use my laptop as a terminal in a NOC sometimes. I would really like an SVGA -input- and PS2/USB dongle on my laptop so I could use the laptop monitor/keyboard/screen as a terminal for another computer. If this were a fairly common possibility, people like the article's author probably wouldn't need to resort to weird things like built-in screens.
Answer: The Motel in God's Eye
Question: What do you get when you start a business renting rooms to people on New Scotland?
It's sad. John Ashcroft is the first person I've ever had spawn the words "Fascist Fuck" spontaneously in my head when seeing his image on sites like this. Normally I am a pretty level-headed guy. I think if you measured my autonomic responses, I would register more of a reaction to Ashcroft for than Saddam.
... if I then do something illegal like piracy or service theft with the modchip, punish that action, not the ownership of the modchip ... it should be no more illegal than having IP connectivity (which also enables software piracy if you want to take it to one possible logical conclusion).
Between things like this and the Patriot Act parts I and the soon to be released part II, this administration has been the most un-American in office since the anti-communist folks in the 50's.
I fully believe that unless the modchip affects someone -elses- hardware, modifying hardware I own should be legal, especially if my use is to do something like run Linux
And before some idiot tries to subpoena my IP address to come search my house, my PS2 is not modified and I long ago (4-5 years) killed my software piracy habit in favor of free software. Just because I'm abiding by the law doesn't mean I agree with the way our current government tries to enforce the law and pass new (unconstitional in some cases) ones.