Scooter[AMMO] was one of the first with this report: "According to Turbolinux CEO Paul Thomas, the future will see Linux boiled down to one generic distribution. Catch the scoop here. How can this claim be made? How can a system like Debian throw away all its guidelines to create a generic distribution? I won't give up apt, and I sure don't see RH accepting it. Why should Peter let the uber-stable power user-oriented Slackware head towards the bug infested hail-the-script-kiddies Red Hat? Standards are great, but aren't the ideals of different distributions what give Linux its flavour?"

chamont writes: "Even though Red Hat is still number 1, this article states that Caldera, SuSE, and Turbo are gaining ground fast. The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history." Interesting to see -- what's cool is that the Linux market, at least what they measured, grew 89% overall. Turbolinux had monstrous growth overall -- you can see a lot more is happening on Pacific Rim.

cmuncey writes: "Salon has an Associated Press article that IBM, HP, Intel, NEC have announced an 'Open Source Testing Lab' for testing Linux for large corporate systems that will open by the end of the year in Portland, OR. The main four sponsors are putting up a couple of million and Red Hat, Turbolinux, Linuxcare, VA Linux, Dell and SGI are also kicking in. The lab itself will be run by a nonprofit corporation that will be neutral in picking the projects to be tested. Sounds a bit better Mindcraft, doesn't it?"

Dreddlox writes "I'm looking at a company producing cluster management software for Linux-based clusters such as Beowulf and would like to get a feel for waht's out there right now. I know Turbolinux for example has a product, enFuzion as do a few others. I'm trying to get a complete list of the players in this market as well as on any open source software and distributions of it if any exist. Also if anybody has any pointers or information on the use of Linux clusters in non-military and non-academic applications (such as auto manufacture and finance) especially outisde the US. I'm curious as to potential for such software in Europe and Asia (with all the talk of China being a ripe market for Linux due to the open source angle)."

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Security Portal has a review on the security of Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera Linux distributions." Debian and Slackware are absent, but its a decent piece.

BJH writes: "This hit the newspapers in Japan this morning - Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Mitsubishi (basically the entire electronics industry in Japan, with the notable exception of Matsushita) will be setting up the "Japan Embedded Linux Consortium" in cooperation with TurboLinux and a whole bunch of other groups to produce a version of Linux suitable for use as an embedded OS for home electronics, mobile phones, cars, industrial machinery - in fact, just about anything with a CPU. Here's a Nikkei article in Japanese (no login needed) and another one here in English (you'll need to log in for this one). This looks like it's going to be big - hold onto your hats, guys..." If anyone has found an English URL that doesn't require a login, please post it below.

Proctors dropped us the following note after jetting home from the Global Linux 2000 meeting in Seoul, Korea. His account is brief, but it conveys a spirit of adventure and fun which only the thought of an RMS / ESR sing-along can.

Thanks to all of the fine folks who contributed these updates, you are in for another illuminating, invigorating, inspiring round of fruity nuggets picked from the tree of wisdom, irradiated, waxed, polished, chilled, packaged and shipped (metaphorically) to your browser. Swallow two of these a week, call if symptoms recur.

Frequent book reviewer and genuine Englishman Duncan Lawie sent us this first-person account of UK Linux Expo 2000. Proof (not that it was needed) that not only is Linux continuing to grow in the UK as elsewhere, but that the disconnect between suits and geeks remains as evident as ever. Read below for good news and medium news -- thankfully, that seems to be as bad as it gets for this transmission.

TurboLinux, a company best-known for its eponymous international-centered Linux distribution, laid off people across the board today in an effort to do some belt-tightening. We received an anonymous submission about the reasoning and details behind these layoffs. In the interest of 'keeping it real,' I immediately contacted TurboLinux and spoke to their VP of Marketing, Lonn Johnston, to get the story straight. The original submission we received, as well as my conversation with Lonn, is below.

SuSE has announced that they are going to release a beta SuSE Linux for IBM's S/390. A beta version will be out in late June. TurboLinux has signed an agreement to port their Linux distribution to S/390 as well. The only major distributor that is missing here is Redhat. What do you think about Linux distributions and the S/390??

In his responses to the Slashdot interview, Miguel shares the deadly truth about GNOME, the shocking story of the future of Bonobo and CORBA, and the titillating tale of adventure and intrigue that lies deep within the bowels of popular Free Software development projects. Okay, so it's not all that shocking, but Miguel has brought us some really great news and answers from his neck of the open source woods.

Sam writes, "TurboLinux, Inc. announced today an agreement with Linksys to bundle TurboLinux in shipments of Linksys 10/100 Ethernet products sold in North America. The special bundling will be included in popular small and medium business solutions such as 10/100 hubs and switches, routers, NIC and PC cards. The agreement, projected by the companies to include more than 1.2 million product shipments over the next 12 months, will give Linksys customers TurboLinux operating system solutions with selected purchases of Linksys products. Source: Electic Tech "

An anonymous reader pointed us to a CNet article that talks about Turbo Linux getting $50M in capital from a variety of investors including Dell, Compaq and others. Also talks about Caldera and Linuxcare and the whole Linux Market right now.

Xiong Jiang sent this to us from Beijing. We're running it exactly as he wrote it, without a single word changed: The curiosity from the world on Linux and China is so high these days. :) Yes, I am a Chinese and I am curious on other parts of the world, particularly, the Linux world, as you are never the less curious on China. :) These days the business of Graphon Corp. with some China companies makes a tremendous fuss on slashdot and LinuxToday." (More --->)

Ok guys, this is purely a rumor, but its one that I've heard from several points on the globe so I'm gonna share it: Vulture Capitalist writes "I just got out of a meeting with Matthew Szulick and it appears as though Red Hat has inked a deal to buy Cygnus. In related news- we also understand that some people at Red Hat were so upset with the acquisition and it's corporate implications that they have decided to resign from their Sr. management (founding) positions. After the failed acquisition attempts with both Linuxcare and TurboLinux- this should prove to be a very interesting deal. I'm personally looking forward to the annual report! " Again, none of this is any more than rumor, but I've caught wind of it from several spots so I figure its worth sharing. What's interesting is that Cygnus has more employees then Red Hat, and actually generates more revenue.

relaye writes "The performance clustering software and services announced today by Linux vendor TurboLinux Inc. and a cabal of partners including Unix vendor SCO Inc. takes the Linux market in an unusual and somewhat risky direction, analysts are saying. " The article cites risks of forking the kernel - not an incredibly probable risk, but a thought-provoking scenario. The danger comes if Linus decides not to incorporates TurboLinux's changes into the kernel.

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. "

According to a company press release published today on Yahoo!Finance, TurboLinux is now the top-selling Japanese computer operating system. Not just the top-selling Linux distribution, but the top-selling OS, period, with sales almost as great as those of the Windows 98 commercial release and the Windows 98 commercial update combined. If only new commercial OS sales, not upgrades, are considered, things look even rosier for TurboLinux, which claims 24.09% of total market share as opposed to 13.25% for Win98 and 10.23% for Macintosh.

knarf noted a story linked from LinuxToday about Red Hat's IPO called Red Hat's Charity Case at Andover News. Several people noted that the story has many errors. Fortunately knarf has written a pretty good summary of what he considers wrong about the article. Several of them are a bit extreme, but many are good points. If you read the original, this is a good rebuttal worth reading.