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TurboLinux Businesses

TurboLinux/LinuxCare Confirmed 38

Posted by Hemos from the yes-it's-true dept.
A reader writes "This isn't a rumor anymore. A Linuxcare spokesperson confirmed that talks are underway." So, the earlier posting is correct - Turbolinux would be acquiring LinuxCare in a pretty standard stock for stock transfer.
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TurboLinux/LinuxCare Confirmed More

TurboLinux/LinuxCare Confirmed

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  • Stock Swap (Score:4)

    by NateKid ( 44775 ) on Friday January 12, 2001 @01:53PM (#510837)
    LinuxCareGuy: I'll give you 9 million shares, valued at $0.00 per share, for 7 million shares of your stock, valued at $0.00 per share.
    TurboLinuxGuy: You're ripping me off. How about 5 million shares of my stock valued at $0.00 per share, in exchange for 10 million shares of your stock, valued at $0.00 per share.
    LinuxCareGuy: You've got a deal. [to himself] He doesn't know I'm planning a 3:1 stock split before we trade. [wicked laughter].
  • I mean, yes, one provides a service whereas the other was primarily a distrobution provider, but together are they a lot stronger than they are alone?

    A company that is able to provide a product AND service on that product is a much stronger company than the sum of two companies providing those things separately, generally.

    Granted, this is a lot smaller consolidation than the AOL/Time-Warner thing, but it is consolidation.

    Consolidation of two minor companies is what happened here. It's likely that they would have been run out of business by Redhat (the real champ in the commercial Linux distro camp) had they not pooled their resources.

    I'm not sure that it's a healthy trend. The open market is supposed to create competition, not conglomerations.

    This is not the creation of some powerhouse monopoly, you know. There is still competition in this market (Redhat and SuSE).

    Dancin Santa
  • Posted by polar_bear:

    Yeah, like LinuxMall and Ebiz - whoops, no more LinuxMall staff...

    Sometimes, when a business starts to fail, it should just be allowed to fail. Ever heard of a Pyhrric (sp?) victory? The employees that built a company deserve to enjoy the success of a company -- if the management of a company can only make money by selling their staff down the river they should go down with the ship too.
  • FIRST off, one of the BEST things that a company losing money can do is merge with another company. It adds more capital, and more impact, and more sales potential, and usually leads to increased efficiency by elimination of extra positions that arent needed under the new structure.

    Before you start replying saying I am wrong, go look at a few businesses that have gone through mergers. There is a reason that stocks raise on the news. It almost always brings more value to a company.

    Mergers aren't nearly that simple. Although they can bring good value to a company by allowing them to selectively combine the best elements of both, the actual work behind is extremely tough. Merging two corporate cultures is extremely difficult, especially when you start laying off the redundant employees. Morale and understanding of the company mission can drop precipitiously if this isn't done right. And it's easy to misgauge what to keep and what to discard from each company.

    I can't find any studies to cite, but I've heard that mergers and eventual shareholder value have about a 50/50 record. I can personally attest to one case of a negative consolidation: I was a regular freelancer at an independent newspaper that was bought by a corporate chain. Upper management waffled on making any decisive moves with their new acquisition for over a whole year, which stuck everyone in this organizational limbo. Nobody felt like they could commit to anything at the company 'cause they didn't know if they'd be all fired or promoted the next day. As a result of the malaise, the entire editorial management had left within a year's time.

    And, sure, stock prices often go up when mergers are announced. But most of the people in the stock market -- just like most people in general -- are sheep. I thought everybody on Slashdot already knew that.

  • You ever try to download Debian?

    Yes. I've installed Debian over the internet at least 5 times

    It's next to impossible!

    Far from it, it's fairly simple. All you have to manually download are the installation floppies (5 floppy images), and the installer automatically downloads whatever else it needs. The Debian documentation unfortunately doesn't make this convenient fact very obvious, and you have my deepest sympathy if you were trying to download the packages one-by-one from the web pages at packages.debian.org. (I tried this at one time, before I knew better).

    Or, if you want to download a CD image, head to http://cdimage.debian.org/ [debian.org].

    You have to buy it!

    Even that's not so bad. As another poster mentioned, you can buy a Debian 3 CD set from cheapbytes for $5.99 + $5 shipping. Unfortunately this will leave you with Debian 2.2, which is very stable, but contains rather old versions of everything.

    Be happy, getting Linux is easier than it's ever been! And the existence of non-corporate distributions like Debian will guarentee that it's always continues to be accessable, no matter what happens in the marketplace.

    --
  • I still do not agree with the writer of This is bad news [slashdot.org]. A merger between a service provider and a distributor can mean quite good news: finally some customer support!

    If we want to get OSS software accepted by the general public (which means we can devote even more time to it), we do need some kind of commercial backing otherwise companies will not use it as much and neither will the average user.

    Watch all those companies which are using linux now: most of them are redhat, some suse and the ones who have a clue run debian.

    Companies want support.

    They want someone to blaim for when something goes wrong and fixes it 24/7. So then you need a service-supplier which is strong and will not go out of business within the year. And it seemed that both were loosing money so it might actually be a Good Thing (TM)

    Because where should there customers go when the go out of business? To the debian [debian.org] user group? They will (most likely) respond with: Please get a decent distribution first, because we dont do RPM.

    Let's face it (another time): companies have to make money, for their shareholders and for their employees. When they lay off their employees because of not enough revenue then we might loose a few linux-users, because M$-programming still gives you fastermoney.

    Bolke.
  • Can't combine the two on the same basis: Linuxcare indeed posponed its IPO indefinitaly and their "services" don't really are up to what is needed in customer service, since their Linux gurus charge exorbiant $ and are self-serving arrogant breed. On the other hand Turbolinux is a software co., whose IPO is pending, that has several fine products and their revenue is based on sales -- they can sell something. But Linuxcare can only sell themselves, which is harder and harder in the Linux world these days, companies are developing their own Linux services and try to get rid of outsorcing. So, Linuxcare is out there on the cold waving a hand for someone to rescue them. It's a trap that apparently worked. Turbolinux is making a huge mistake, in my view, because instead of developing its own technical support, which is not easy to do, they opted for an easy way out and engaged Linuxcare to do that for them. But in order to support something you need to put your hearth into in, not just the mind full of information. Since Linuxcare is "neutral" on any Linux distro how they can support Turbolinux products more than others? So, the whole thing is not based on common sense but on the false perception that Linuxcare can match Turbolinux's needs. Those needs were created based on misconception that technical support is a secondary aspect for the software company. Now Turbolinux is about to pay the price for their own arrogance and that price can become so hudge that it sinks the whole ship.
  • A company that is able to provide a product AND service on that product is a much stronger company than the sum of two companies providing those things separately, generally.

    ...and if you have lots of money, you get nifty legal muscles to flex.

    More seriously - isn't it weird that this is the bulk of Microsoft's argument in the antitrust trial? Interesting that when you read it in a different context all the M$ bashers love it, but if this were said in conjunction with a Microsoft story, especially intended positively, it'd be regarded as flamebait from a loser.

    This'll probably count as flamebait too... Just an observation on our geek culture.

  • You made a good point about tech support companies - they hardly can make to the top if ever. Linuxcare had to pull out of the IPO, lay off 60% of their people, etc. That tells a lot, if they were as hot as advertised they would attract customers but instead they charge, I am told, exorbiant fees for their services, so someone who hires them will want to use their own people the next time when they need Linux support. Now, on the way under, they pulled a big stunt and created impression that Turbolinux needs them. "We have services, they have products.." - said their spokewoman. However, their services consist of few pompatic nerds that don't really care for Turbolinux products, because their professed neutrality regarding all Linux distros would have to go away. So, this is not really impressive marriage of conveniance, it rather could turn out to be a destructive blow for Turbolinux that has its own problems and now is acquiring one more.
  • This is a bit long winded but please bear with me Red Hat has done some wonderfull things by diversifying into embeded solutions, and they will probably prosper. That aside, I paid $70 for the deluxe version of Mandrake 7.0 a while back. Sure I could have gotten everything free online, but I wanted to help Mandrake. I wanted to say good job, keep up the good work and by the way here's a $70 (minus the overhead for the distro media and books) donation. Turbo Linux is too small to make it in this tough market. There are simply too many Linux disto's out there trying to make it. There is nothing wrong with a taylored distro, but having so many is keeping many companies from prospering due to too much competition. M$ is too big and if Linux does not move quickly enough, it will be marginalized by .NET. Linuxcare is a good idea, but I know of no tech company which has been able to survive solely off of service contracts. Linuxcare may take off if it is part of a larger distribution, especially in the highend market. Ultimately this merger is a good thing. Ideally more mergers need to happen so that Linux can gain the resources it needs to truely take over the desktop. As long as there are a few major disto's, the open source model can still be maintained. Otherwise Linux will continue to be used by 5% of the desktop market (Linux Magazine) out of transient fanatisism. It has no prayer of surviving, like Apple has in this way, because it is not very centralized.
  • One of the main reasons for the merger was that Turbolinux never developed solid and consistant technical support of their own, because their management didn't understand its importance. (I've heard tech. support dep. in Turbo is overseen by a sale manager). Therefore, those guys see their salvation in this ill conceived merger in hope to solve their support problem. However, instead, the new problem is looming on the horizon: Linuxcare doesn't really care for Turbo products as seen from their website. Just check it out.

  • Re:Can't combine the two... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who's to say TurboLinux's ship is not already sinking. I'm posting anonymously here (need to here), but I can tell you that neither business is doing well, and each needs to do something like this to keep things afloat a bit longer. But I agree that the mix is foolishness on the part of both mgmt teams..
  • It seems like the government and the business world are working together to create an economic down-slump by creating huge multi-national corporations that will charge such extreme rates for everything that no one will be able to afford it.

    1) Get a simple economics text
    2) Read about economies of scale
    3) Slap forhead making "D'oh" sound.
  • >ones who have a clue run debian. I am getting pretty sick of attitudes like this, who cares at the end of the day what people use! I know very clued people who do not like Debian at all....Attitudes like this are actually driving people away who would be a great loss to the community. Each and every distro has its strengths and weaknesses...Another fact I have noticed is other proffesionals who love a feature of one distrobution and yet another detests it! Horses for courses....Personnally I love SuSE a lot due to having the best of many worlds, got the GUI setup routines and also have the opportunity to get down and dirty, that works for me in many enviroments. If Debian or distrobution X works just as well for you then power to you, just do not go around bashing others for there choice of flavor. >because M$-programming still gives you faster >money. A huge user base helps with that, but hopefully in a few years Linux will have a much larger user base on whcih to earn a living off. The areas where I think IMHO you can make a lot of money now would be in consulting. Two areas that come right to mind would be Sendmail configuration and custom Firewalls. Trust me there are a lot of companies out there connected to the Internet who are not just dot.coms and are relying on Fred the accountant to get there DSL or even T1 internet connection fully up and running! You are more likely to come across the Fred's of this world in small to medium businesses across the whole of the Western World. In large organizations it should be better, but its not always so. With this merger between Linuxcare and Turbolinux I do not know what will happen. Can they get customers? The customers they get can they make the majority really happy. Getting 100% happiness is not possible, as some will demand the impossible. These are just my humble opinions. And to all the Fred's in the world, an apology, I just used your name to illustrate a point. StarTux
  • It seems like the government and the business world are working together to create an economic down-slump by creating huge multi-national corporations that will charge such extreme rates for everything that no one will be able to afford it.
    Umm, no. Ever taken an economics class?

    Simply put, even a monopolist will never charge more than what the market will bear, because doing so would be stupid -- the decrease in sales would do more damage than the increase in margin would. Thus, even huge multinational corporations will never charge so much for their products that in doing so they damage the economy.

  • No. So, what? You ever try to download Debian? It's next to impossible! You have to buy it! The same thing is going to happen to all of the distros, because there won't be any more than a few major ones.

  • Users whining that it means that we will only have a handfull of distros, users whining that the combined companies will suck, etc. etc.

    FIRST off, one of the BEST things that a company losing money can do is merge with another company. It adds more capital, and more impact, and more sales potential, and usually leads to increased efficiency by elimination of extra positions that arent needed under the new structure.

    Before you start replying saying I am wrong, go look at a few businesses that have gone through mergers. There is a reason that stocks raise on the news. It almost always brings more value to a company.

    Now, onto the second set of posts, those looking for the falling sky..

    One, just because one company merges with another (not to mention that only TurboLinux had a distro!), doesnt mean that there are less distros. Geez, go take a look at lwn's listing of active distros sometime..

    Even if they both did, so what!? Its TWO distros in a field of HUNDREDS.

    It means nothing in and of itself. Both companies had to tight of a vision, ie, one was a distro (not an easy way to make money), and one was a service provider.

    Neither will really be successful on its own, IMHO.

    So, I would like to congratulate both on their PENDING POSSIBLE attempt at merger.

    Here is to hoping that they pull it off well.
  • What? It's next to impossible to download Debian? I think you're confused, because I seem to download it fairly frequently to do installs, and don't seem to have any problems.
  • Just plain old TLC, baby...
    Claim your namespace.
  • Turbolinux would be acquiring LinuxCare in a pretty standard stock for stock transfer.

    If I were selling my high-tech company to another, these days I'd be wanting at least some cold, hard, cash out of the deal. A lot of people have ended up broke after their new stock tanked.

  • Re:Oh puh-lease.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    elimination of extra positions that arent needed under the new structure

    In other words: gets people fired and increases unemployment.

    Great going, capitalist pig.

  • You can buy it for like $1.98 from linuxmall. And yes I have installed from download it's easy.

  • Re:Bye-bye free Linux (Score:4)

    by PD ( 9577 ) <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Friday January 12, 2001 @01:56PM (#510859) Homepage Journal
    www.cheapbytes.com sells Debian. If you don't have that money lying around, and you live in Michigan, just go out and pick up 20 empty soda cans and you've paid for it.

    If you live on some other states, you might have to pick up 40 cans, but that's still cheap.

    If you live in a state where there is no deposit on empties, you might have to resort to bank robbery or panhandling. I suspect that it's really not that much of a problem though. I mean how often do we see people on the curb holding signs that say "I won't lie to you, I need five dollars for a pack of cigarettes and a Debian CD."

  • With all of this talk of there being less and less distros with the mergers and other things going on. Maybe soon it will be like the good o'l days when there were only a few distros availible. I remember when there was only Slack. Then there were all the others that joined. Take a look at http://www.linux.org/dist/english.html and see how many distros there actually are. Then maybe the complaining and paranoia will stop.
  • Not really. I actually downloaded it two ways: ISO image (you only need the first one) and downloading from ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/disk s-i386/current/: base2_2.tgz, modules.tgz, boot.bin and root.bin (boot and root from images-1.44 dir under the disks-i386 dir). After it rebooted in a relativily easy setup (text based, but still easy) I selected the Debian FTP site for the sources list. All in all it was very easy.
  • Trim the fat, or kill the cow. Either way, people are gonna lose their jobs. This way its LESS.

  • Are you saying Apple HAS or HAS NOT survived 'in this way'? I couldn't quite tell.

    Apple doesn't seem to have more than about 5% of the desktop market - probably a lot of 'fanatics' as you'd say. But Apple is one of the most centralized companies out there, imo. So, which is it? Linux needs centralization, or decentralization?

  • To the first part I was implying that Apple had survived. But my point is that Linux is too centralized due to the fact there are too many disto's. The issue is that IF M$ is able to marginalize Linux with .NET, then it will fizzle because Linux lacks the centralization to keep it together. And yes I am a Linux "fanatic" (not a very smart thing to be when one works at M$). The problem is that .NET is not just about udates over the internet, it's about eventually getting rid of the setop box by providing all of the services needed through an appliance such as a digital TV. How can Linux compete with that if it gets that far? .NET must be stopped in its tracks and that will take some serious changes in the Linux comunity.
  • On the contrary, the two hemorrhaging companies combine to create a larger company that hemmorhages just as much money. Remember half of the new company is now redundant...
  • Several names have been suggested:

    TurboCare - boring, unimaginative, and does not relate to the company

    TurboLinuxCare - that is way too long. New companies need a short snappy name

    I'd like to give my suggestion: Linux^2 -- not only does it follow the trends of SmithKLine Beecham or NeXT by using punctuation marks in the tradename, it accurately reflects both the name of the former 2 companies, AND the sole trade!

  • Here it comes (Score:4)

    by PD ( 9577 ) <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Friday January 12, 2001 @01:34PM (#510867) Homepage Journal
    All the reporters who made a buck in 2000 saying that Linux is going to become fragmented are going to make even more bucks in 2001 saying that Linux is going to hell because of all the consolidation.

  • Turbolinux filed to go public in October, hoping to raise about $60 million. In the meantime, it laid off some of its staff and raised $30 million to keep operations going.

    Linuxcare filed for an IPO but postponed it amid layoffs, the departure of chief executive Fernand Sarrat, and other problems. To keep the company running, Linuxcare closed a $30 million round of funding in August.

    So we have two money-hemorraging Linux companies mergine to create a larger money-hemorraging Linux company. Sounds like quite the loser combination to me.

    I imagine that it this stage of the game, though, neither company has much choice in potential mates.

    Dancin Santa
  • have you ever read the GPL?


  • Will it be "Turbo Linux Care"?

    Will it be "Linux Turbo Care"?

    Or "Care Linux Turbo"?

    How about "Turbo Care Linux"?

  • Oh no, please do not repeat that part of the previous story.

    The real question should be, why did these companies merge? I mean, yes, one provides a service whereas the other was primarily a distrobution provider, but together are they a lot stronger than they are alone?

    I'm not sure all this consolidation of the market lately is a good thing. Granted, this is a lot smaller consolidation than the AOL/Time-Warner thing, but it is consolidation. Whatever happened to the idea that competition stimulates the economy and creates multiple cheap alternatives? It seems like the government and the business world are working together to create an economic down-slump by creating huge multi-national corporations that will charge such extreme rates for everything that no one will be able to afford it. Of course in their minds (the government officials) it probably translates to, "We will get lots of money up-front from the special interests, plus we will collect more in taxes later! WHOOHOO!"

    As I said, I realize this isn't a major consolidation, but it does tend to point out a rather major trend. And I'm not sure that it's a healthy trend. The open market is supposed to create competition, not conglomerations.

    But, in the end, I guess the big money people know best. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

  • Because the other thread is already so full of trolls and spammers that it would not be re-visited by the people that would actually care about the story. Updates rarely get reviewed. And the previous story seemed so entirely made-up that it was really not worthy of a re-visit if you had read it the first time.

    On the other hand, a new story will be viewed by anyone that is interested. Seems justified to me.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Or just download the RedHat iso's and burn them to a CD.

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