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Intel Invests in TurboLinux 100

Posted by CmdrTaco from the money-fo-nothin dept.
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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Intel Invests in TurboLinux More

Intel Invests in TurboLinux

Comments Filter:
  • This is a step in the right direction, although I would have rather seen the money go to the Debian project, but oh well...
  • Isn't Debian non-profit? You can't invest in a non-profit organization - only donate them money.
  • My big question about this deal is why does intel care? I look over the press release on intel's site, the article that was /.ed and the interview on news.com, no where is there mention about the motivation of Intel. Will Intel finaly take the gloves of with M$ and show them that the world does not revolve around Redmond? God I hope so....
  • Why would a company want to invest in a not-for-profit organization like Debian?
  • ....is it possible that the big players could direct some cash towards the general linux good, such askernal/driver development, the gnome/kde projects, and the like? (OK, I realize gnome is from rh, but...)

    This way, the entire linux community can benefit. Right now, all I'm seeing is cash going to the big corporate players, and some of the less big, such as in the case, TurboLinux.

    Is it me, or is it just that the corporates are buying into more corporate culture because they just don't understand the whole Linux philosophy?

    Hrm... my thoughts for the day.

  • There seems to be a notion that they go head to head with Red Hat, but what have TurboLinux got to offer over Red Hat. If SUSE is supposed to be aimed at the europian market, Debian at the purist, where do Turbo Linux go?
  • Intel probably never will go to invest in Debian. I don't think Debian is trying to make money and cater to the type of clients that Intel really looks towards, specifically companies that buy the latest/greatest (read those with the highest margins) processors for their servers. This isn't to say that Debian couldn't be used for those servers, but that companies such as RedHat and Turbolinux market towards that crowd.

    As everyone knows, Intel is in this for themselves, and assuming they have limited money (relatively speaking), they're going to put their money where they'll get the best return.

    Personally, every time I try to work up a good dislike for Intel, they seem to do something that redeems them a bit. More distributions with money is a good thing. That means more development and more money for Open Source projects.

    Sujal

  • I suppose that money for linux can only help beat our evil adversary and their mountains of propaganda. I do not, however like their idea of selling their "new software for managing large amounts of systems" as proprietery. $2000 for unlimited?!? Redhat and many others are very good for sticking close to open source. I only hope that this new software does not sell good. Maybe they'll do 'that open source thang' then.

    --David

    These are not my pants. --Reese Roper

  • makes good business sense (Score:3)

    by TheCodeMaster ( 101307 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @01:00PM (#1622331)
    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.
  • I wonder if MS are going to put up another web page: "Why you shouldn't invest in Linux Companies"

    • Reason #1: They don't have a stranglehold on the market
    • Reason #2: Most of their employees aren't millionares
    Anyone want to add a few more?
    ------------------------------------------------ -------
  • 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.
  • Well, it seems obvious to me. They want to promote competition in the Linux market so that it will become even better than what it currently is. This will aid in having more machines with Linux, which means more processors...

    Of course, I would have to look into whether or not more Linux = more machines than are currently being sold or if more Linux = less market share for other OSes which means same amount of new processors..

    Ah, wait! What if it means that OEMs can spend less on the software and MORE on the machine! That would make Intel quite happy!!

    Hmmmm....... I'm still thinking about this one.
  • Didn't Intel a make a major investment in RedHat in the not-so-distant past? (About a year ago IIRC) Now that they've invested in TurboLinux as well, I wonder if they think Linux may eventually be a desktop contender? These investments are what will make it happen.

    Anyway, the more the merrier I think. Competition between big Linux distributions can only make the distributions better, which will in turn make Linux better, and more accessable to the masses. Many of the companies also contribute developers full time to Open Source projects as well, which is a really good thing,because most people can't afford to quit their day jobs to write free code, as much as they'd like to.
  • TurboLinux is HUGE in Asia - It's currently outselling Windows there.

    It has a great install process as well, I think better than RedHat 6.0 (I can't comment on 6.1). Automatic NIC config, Video card detection and config, etc.. during the install process.

  • My main question is this:

    Out of all of the linux distributions, why TurboLinux?

    Now, I've never used TL and I don't know anyone that does so I can't judge its value as a distribution, but I don't understand why intel picked them over say Mandrake? However it's good that one of the less published distributions is getting attention.

    Perhaps Intel is just trying to grab more headlines by throwing their corporate weight around?

    Zach

    Crap a segfault

  • See I thought that too, but that would be good business and Intel very rarely invests into compainies that will do something good for the masses, e.g. they bought ICat. I am just wondering what the hidden agenda is, something like this is just to good to be true, Intel the company that has more R&D dollars than the US goverment wants to help something along that would hurt there bedmates in redmond. humm...
  • I think you can take Intel's statement at face value - they want Linux to run best on Intel processors. Thus Linux users will buy Intel boxen and make Intel happy. It also allows them to control their fate a bit - not totally relaint on the EVIL EMPIRE for an OS.

  • This could actually be a major test of the commercial viability of open-source. There are a number of Linux distributions out there, a number of them moneymaking ventures to one extent or another, but Red Hat has been, until now, the only company to really build a business model on a corporate scale around Linux. If this investement really grows Turbo Linux into a full-scale, commercial Linux corporation, this will be a chance to observe two large-scale corporations competing to sell Linux as their core product in the same market (N. America).

    The OSS naysayers have been insisting that a company cannot survive in a competitive market space by giving away their core product, and all of their R&D. This is exactly what Red Hat has been doing, and hopefully Turbo Linux will follow suit. Will they chicken out and go proprietary (with non-OSS add-ons and such)? Will one of them crush the other? Or can they really both prosper? Only time will tell. The future of corporate open-source could be at stake.

    This is a smart move on Intel's part. They've been not-so-subtly tugging at Microsoft's leash, and this investment has the potential to drive up Linux's acceptance (nothing like a little competition to make Red Hat and Turbo work hard for customers). Furthermore, it gives Intel a chance to test the strength of the OSS model, and see whether they can count on it to rescue them from their death-embrace with MS.

  • I think a big reason could be that TurboLinux's presence in the Asian market with their Chinese & Japenese distros.

  • The main thing that I pulled from this article is that Intel wants to sell Linux, but with some proprietary software on it. What will this lead to? Many different distributions, all with different commands, different functionality, different user interfaces?

    I really don't want to go around naysaying and predicting the fall of Linux, but I think the last thing Linux needs is the kind of fracturing within itself that is similar to what happened to UNIX. With so many distributions, some proprietary, some not, it's going to start to confuse and frustrate consumers. "I have Linux at home, but when I use it at work it has none of the things I usually use at home."

    The solution? I don't know. Try to keep up with Intel features in open source? That may be difficult, and not feasible when other compnies do this. Suggestions?

    Or maybe it all means nothing. JALD.

  • With a thousand dollar price tag, they appear to be aiming themselves at the NT market. If Turbo Linux wants only the server market, and if Intel believes Red Hat will do well in the desktop market, then the dual investement from Intel in Red Hat and Turbo Linux actually makes sense.
    ---
  • That's very difficult for a company like Intel to do. Here they are making an investment - they hope to earn money through it. They can't just donate foo millions of dollars to "the linux kernel developers." Redhat can give back to the community by hiring linux developers since expanding linux clearly benefits them. If even Redhat tried to donate money to any of these groups they would risk a lawsuit from shareholders.
  • I'm glad Intel is investing in Linux companies. The financial support should help Linux to develop and spread.

    However, what I'd really like to see Intel do is to put some of their engineering resources into developing better compilers (or at least, x86 optimizations). Not only would this help every free operating system, and anything else compiled using GCC, but it would also make Intel's processors "seem" faster in benchmarks.

    I think the egcs/gcc developers have been doing a wonderful job, but I'm sure there are Intel engineers who have a better understanding of X86 optimizations.

    99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
    fix one bug, compile it again...

  • Re:Why TurboLinux? (Score:3)

    by minority ( 23819 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @01:13PM (#1622348)
    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.
  • > Isn't Debian non-profit? You can't invest in a non-profit organization - only donate them money.

    What is wrong with donating money...? Someone has to pay for the webhosting and all that stuff...
  • According to this article they plan to make proprietary additions.
  • I can tell you they did not invest in Mandrake because Mandrake is basically Red Hat. Isnt TurboLinux popular in Japan though? Well, I am not sure, but if it is then I could see that as a pretty good reason.
  • I didn't say there was anything wrong with it - it's just that Intel can't do it. They'd risk a lawsuit from their shareholders.

  • To avoid another monopoly? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now, to start off, I am NOT one of the "Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux" people.

    Ok, having said that, I'm guessing that Intel is fed up with a monopoly over the current OS of choice for their processors, and wants to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

    So, despite the anti-monopolistic protections that the GPL provides, they may feel that it makes sense to have SEVERAL strong Linux distributions rather than just one. That way they won't be tied to one OS vendor the way they have been in the past.
  • I agree, their bit about adding proprietary software is cause for concern. If it's just stuff like Word Perfect, etc. then OK I guess.
    Let's hope that TurboLinux doesn't try to re-proprietize stuff, and if they do, that RedHat, Debian et.al. grab more marketshare. What else can one say?

  • hmm (Score:2)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    Excellent. Maybe this will help curb the "Redhat is going to take over the market and become the next Microsoft!!!!" hysteria amongst the slashdot readership. It's also a somewhat unusual move - maybe Intel is hedging it's bets. Kinda agrees with the idea that Redhat != Linux. Or maybe Intel believes that different distributions have different customers, and want to appeal to the broadest possible market.

    --
  • I thought Intel already was. They want support for IA64, and egcs is getting it. They also were working at one point to add in Intel's SIMDs instructions (mmx (and?) Katami). AMD should put some cash into optimizing egcs, etc. for the Athlon and x86-64, since optimization makes a huge performance gain under Linux.

    Now.. if Intel would also invest evenly, not just Linux and BeOS (are they still?), that would be nice. Intel - any support for the BSD guys too?
  • And they've also invested in Be, Inc. Maybe intel is not so evil and just like to give monetary support to companies they think offer innovative technology in case they ever become big, they will owe something to intel. I wonder what would have happenned if intel had owned 10% of Microsoft's stock. 0.o
    • Reason #3: They aren't using any open source.
    Every MS anti-something page has at least one blatant lie.

  • Ironic, Isn't It... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    that Intel will supplant Microsoft as the most feared monopoly in 5 years? Intel is making sure that x86 is alive and kicking regardless of whether Microsoft is the king. Microsoft better start kissing Intel's ass soon or they'll become the next decade's version of IBM in the 80's -- a displaced goliath

  • Could be unix wars all over again but I dont think so. Heres why...

    The biggest problem with unix wars was that you couldnt be sure that the tools you used on one dialect were there on the next one down the hall, their configurations were all done differently (or so it seemed) and all sorts of other little, and I repeat little, differences. 99% of the tools within different versions of linux are GPLed and unless theres a really big advantage to replacing them with something else, folks wont. I've got better things to spend my disk space on than some proprietary tool that does just what the ones I've already got can and that I cant tweak if I have to. The answer to systems where the tools you need or are used to using dont exist yet is easy.. install 'em! As a sysadmin I've never blown off a request from a user to install a GPL prog that they would rater use compared to what was already there (provided, of course that I download and compile it myself so that if I'm going to catch crap for letting a trojan loose it was really me that did it!) but I'd sure balk at doing likewise with a proprietary thing. They want to throw these "proprietary" tools in free well thats fine but if it becomes anything so central that it impacts the functionality of the system then the company concerned will be left with a product they cant shift. The biggest advocates of linux are the open source programmers and users any distro maker isnt going to want to alienate them all at a stroke. They'd be slashdotted into oblivion in minutes....

  • Intel does put resources into developing better compilers. But, hehe, guess who uses them? Intel. They're not released to the public.

  • Re:Gee Why Does Intel Care? (Score:3)

    by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @02:06PM (#1622363) Journal
    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.
  • I guess that's another distro we can count on to be broken on AMD chips. . .

    (in case you didn't recognize the wily disguise, this was sarcasm)

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • You hear of them if you subscribe to the security bulletins microsoft offer.
  • Yup...

    They want to be sure that they are not dependant on Microsoft for an OS to run on their chips. This way they invest in several Linux distros so that when the time comes, they are not 100% dependant on MS.

    Also by investing in Linux Distros, it is possible that they are trying to subliminaly influence the adoption of linux on different archs. (ie: well give you money if you continue to support linux on the intel chipsets....)


  • Investing in Linux (Score:3)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @02:58PM (#1622370)
    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.

  • Intel does sell its x86 compiler to the public. Here [intel.com] is the link to the Intel C/C++ Compiler product page. However they are available only on M$ platforms.
  • Is it me, or is it just that the corporates are buying into more corporate culture because they just don't understand the whole Linux philosophy?

    Is it necessary for the large corporations to buy into the Linux Philosophy, for everyone to benefit? The way the GPL is worded, any contributions that these corporations make benefit all of us, regardless of their profit motive.

    Unfortunately, it seems that for Linux to penetrate further into the market, Corporations are going to have to be involved in some capacity, either by creating non-GPL'ed software packages, or by funding GPL'd Distro's.

    Personally, I'd rather see them funding GPL'd distro's than creating scads of new neat software that I can't afford to buy. Not that I'm against commercial software, I just can't afford to buy much of it now.

    The Linux Philosophy was a great starting point, but in the end, it is just a philosophy. Any system that can't an influx of ideas new to them (ie Profits) will surely stagnate and atrophy.



  • According to this [cnet.com] news report, Intel has been working with Cygnus to provide support for MMX and PIII SSE instructions in order to improve x86 linux application performance.
  • I think mayhaps because TurboLinux optimizes the kernals they distribute for the processor it's going to be run on. Perhaps, like IBM, Intel is interested in their Clustering distribution.

    TurboLinux also seems to be more of a corporate player than any of the other Distro's. Who knows? Maybe they are agressively seeking corporate partenerships, which is how they scored IBM as well.

    This is all speculative.

  • That might change now that they're in the Linux Biz.
  • 1) Intel doesn't want to deal with a monopoly --
    dealing with Microsoft has meant that MS had
    the ability to force Intel to do almost anything
    MS wants...

    2) Intel wants to corrupt the opensource
    revolution to make it easier for companies to
    make profits from selling software. Intel's doing
    this both on behalf of its business partners as
    well as itself

    3) Redhat is committed to crossplatform support.
    Intel stands a better chance of making dominant
    the platforms they choose from a company they
    raise to greatness themself. This is especially
    helpful when they can make unavailable software
    for other platforms, especially by weakening the
    open source movement while helping the linux
    movement.
  • I just wanted to throw in my (lame) $.02, that being that TurboLinux is cool ;)
    I used Debian for a long time, but with recent releases it's gotten to a point of inexcusable bloat yadda yadda yadda. So I went shopping for a new distro and eventually decided on TL. So far, I've been very pleased. It's much faster than generic i486-compiled distros (of which there are fewer every day...), has a great installer by my standards, has timely updates (XF86 3.3.5, for instance), and just generally feels good.
    Hopefully, this new influx of investor's money will make TL even better!

    MoNsTeR
  • 1. The more big companies invest in Linux the more we loose.

    2. Remember Microsoft was started by some bright eyed college students in their dorn room.

    3. If we are too busy competeing with ourselves how can we compete with other OS's?

    4. It used to be the enemy of my enemy is my friend....I wonder who our friends will be 6 months from now...

  • I didn't say there was anything wrong with it - it's just that Intel can't do it. They'd risk a lawsuit from their shareholders.

    Say what?

    Somebody better inform the shareholders of all of those companies that have donated money to the FSF down through the years...

    I'd sure like to see the shareholders suit prove that donating money to an organization that is producing tools to help develop your target market is a breach of fudiciary responsibility (the usual shareholder suit). You could also pretty easily argue that a donation to Debian is just to develop good will. If shareholders could sue over donations to non-profits, we'd sure see a lot less corporate philanthropy.

  • ..that it's not doing the same for the "yeah, more firepower to crush the Evil Empire with!!!!" madness amongst the Slashdot readership. Perhaps it would be best to judge each distro and think about how you (in the broad sense) feel about their popularity (or lack thereof) based on their particular merits, and not based on how likely they are to help topple Microsoft? After all, you should support something you like, not just anything that isn't MS.. Or else you might as well support an OS that's been around a while, like MacOS, and forget all about these silly "Linux", "BSD", and "BeOS" thingies..

    At any rate, I think it would be funny if Intel suddenly lost its mind (ok, that's subject to debate, especially in light of the recent rechristening of the "Merced" chip.. ugh) and invested heavily in every distro maker.. only to see most of the distros get sucked under.. along with their money. ;)

  • well they already got rid of their support of NT under the Alpha architecture... Does that tell us of MS's interest in supporting 64bit architectures in the future?
  • As others have said, Intel doesn't want to be too closely identified with Redmond. See the Intel people's testimony in the anti-trust suit for details. Their afraid that MS is going to suffer a lot in the next few years and Intel is afraid to suffer with them.

    I think Intel has recognized that the current Linux offerings can pretty well be deployed on current hardware or AMD processors. There may be some advantage to running on the latest, hottest processor, but not much.

    With bloatware, Intel could count on people starving for the fastest that Intel could provide. The new marketplace will have people upgrading far less often, and more often they'll be looking at better I/O throughput (SCSI disks - several to balance workload, better networking, faster bus speeds) rather than higher processor power. Bloatware (CERTAINLY Win95/95, this is probably less true of NT) isn't very good at taking advantage of lots of concurrent I/O anyway, so people just don't go for all these I/O throughput upgrades now. They just buy the latest processor in the vain hope that it can keep up.

    Intell sees that they'll be looking at a slump in their bread-and-butter processor sales if something doesn't happen.

    Their only hope is to try and get Linux vendors in hot feature competition in the hopes that all this new functionality will lead to the bloatware heaven that they've enjoyed in the last 5 years.

  • interesting chain of events..

    1.IBM comes to dominate the computer world.
    2.Microsoft works itself into a position where people buying IBM products are heavily directed toward Microsoft DOS.
    3.Microsoft works itself into a position where it is independant of IBM.
    4.Microsoft comes to dominate the computer world.
    5.IBM ceases to be of any importance and collapses in a mess of antitrust lawsuits. It never really goes back into the consumer market.
    6.Intel works itself into a position where people buying Microsoft products are heavily directed toward the x86 architecture.
    ((YOU ARE HERE))
    7.Intel works itself into a position where it is independant of Microsoft

    Do you see a pattern? Can you guess step 8? Of course, this is probably looking at things the wrong way, and exaggerating things a lot, and assuming that Intel really can work itself into a position where when microsoft falls Intel won't come crashing down with it (which is not _that_ likely). But still, it's awful suspicious.

    If i wanted to be even MORE paranoid, i'd refer to the other postings here stating that TurboLinux is thinking about putting propeitary stuff in their distro; the way i look at it, that sounds an awful lot like closed-source and-- as a result-- not quite as hardware-independant, since mr. end user can't just ./configure;make all. Is Intel trying to destroy the hardware independance of Linux by promoting things which will tether it to a limited number of processors? Is the shadowy and much-feared Covert Ops arm of Intel planning on replacing the Turbolinux management with evil androids which will slavishly refuse to support any non-intel microchips well?

    Who knows? Certainly not me. But the truth is out there. The truth is out there..

    [if you wish, you may insert in this space a random and uninformed flamebait about integrating support for PPC and Alpha machines into the main linux kernel tree]

    -mcc-baka
    (this post was originally written with Mozilla M10 for macintosh. Its form support lacks many things, for instance full support for the left arrow key. After clicking "preview" i discovered that Mozilla M10 randomly deletes about half of what you put into any form you try to send. I had to retype it in a more finished browser. Hey; it's beta.)

  • Re:Gee Why Does Intel Care? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's simple, really. Right now, the operating system is the only unique part of a PC. There are plenty of memory, hard drive, motherboard, CD/DVD drive, and other peripheral vendors. Even AMD and Cyrix provide a bit of competition for Intel. However, only Microsoft can provide Windows, and right now, Windows is still the only OS that an ordinary user will want, and thus the only part that can be sold at more than commodity prices.

    If Linux becomes a realistic desktop competitor, then the OS becomes just another commodity item on the PC. Combine that with new instructions (say, the next revision of MMX) that AMD / Transmeta / whoever can't do, and suddenly the main (Intel) processor is the only part of the PC that can be sold at higher than commodity prices. This same reasoning is why MS pressures Intel to license the MMX and Pentium 3 instructions to AMD et al, so as to keep too much uniqueness from accumulating in the core processor. Thus, Intel is interested in taking away MS's power.

    Posted as A/C because I work for a company involved in one of these Intel deals.

  • Shoot. Dumb move on their part, IMHO. Well, then the question becomes whether Red Hat will stay free, or feel forced to go proprietary in order to compete. This puts Intel's move in another light as well: perhaps they're setting up these two business models (totally free a la Red Hat, and free/proprietary mix a la Turbo Linux) in direct competition, to see which is more viable. My money's on Red Hat.

    Also, this might cool off the flameage directed at Red Hat. If Turbo sticks to a proprietary strategy, Red Hat will look like the champion of Free Software by comparison.

  • I'd think Database applications are one of the weakest areas of Open Source Software.
  • According to Alphalinux Online (www.alphalinux.org) TurboLinux was working on an alpha port, which always struck me as somewhat odd, seeing as their site goes on about how optimized the distribution is for the intel pentiums and all that. I hope they do keep thier alpha development though, because us in the alphalinux world, running 64 bit right now instead of waiting for Merced or whatever lame name Intel has for it now, could always use more choice to make the distros better and better. Works the same as the 32bit world, just quicker :)

  • Reason 5 - Linux uses an antiquated command line interface where users have to type "commands" rather than having a GUI where users can point and click.

    Reason 6 - Linux is too confusing to use because there are too many GUI's. Why would a user want to learn how to use both GNOME and KDE when they could just learn Windows?

  • Ok, I don't want to say this is an end game for RedHat. But it does partially confirm my feelings about the viability of commercial OSS development. First Mandrakes sales, now Turbo Linux is moving in....

    The gist of the problem is: the company which spends millions of dollars on R&D does not necessarily have a better product than its competitors. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it to spend 10 million dollars developing a GUI that your competitors will copy byte for byte? You simply can't differentiate yourself based on your product itself. Futhermore, the competitors can copy your work byte for byte, and add in a few nominal contributions at the 11th hour making their product nominally better, not to mention cheaper.

    I'm sure plenty of geeks will say "but RedHat is building up a reputation". While this may be partially true, the geeks are only sliver of the real market. Furthermore, many of these geeks aren't buying Redhat. They're downloading it.

    I really do want to see RedHat succeed. But I have my doubts. I don't believe that this business model is anywhere near proven. The fact is that for all the "support" arguments, RedHat's profits aren't coming from support (yet). They're coming from what I'd term 'convenience sales'. That is, they're making profits by SELLING their product based on the fact that its a bit easier to install and document. For this reason, I have serious doubts about RedHat being able to grasp MS's market share. They've enjoyed relative obscurity. While would-be clones (byte for byte) can't garner enough attention to pick away at RedHat's sales profitably.

    Essentially all RedHat has is a trademark, or a series of trademarks. Many people think this is enough, and they frequently point to Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In my opinion, these are entirely different. The different colas enjoy unique formulas. While they may, in reality, taste the same, many people would argue differently. Neither of them can, nor would they, claim that they are the exact same formula. The same can not be said for GPL software. Your competitors can make an exact copy of all your work. They can also pile software on, and still allow the customers exact same software.
  • As I start to think about what this means to really anyone, I start think of a few 'motives' for this investment (and others).

    1: Intel likes Linux: Meaning they want to see it thrive.
    2: Intel wants to keep AMD et al out: Meaning their investments will make distros optimize for Intel (maybe only...) keeping AMD especially in a hard place.
    3: Intel wants independency: Intel sees linux as the next top OS, wants to be sure they're not locked into Microsoft.
    4: Intel likes throwing money at people who look neat: Hey, not such a far feched idea.

    Eitherway I think it is good business practice... though AMD might think differently.

  • You speak as though the battle were already over, which is far from the case. My point was exactly that this is a test, to see if your doubts are justified or not, and it's far too early to tell. I don't really have the energy to respond to your criticisms, but I'd reccomend any or all of Eric Raymond's papers, particularly The Magic Cauldron, as to why Red Hat's business model may be commercially viable.

    I will say (beacuse Raymond doesn't directly address it) is that Red Hat is, to a large extent, buying goodwill. They have contributed a lot to the OSS community, in a variety of ways, and as a direct result, I think of them first when I think about buying Linux (same reason my next computer is going to be a VA box). An awful lot of Linux types think in precisely this way. This effect could be offset by a truly substantial, worthwhile proprietary offering from Turbo, but even then the ickiness of proprietary software (and its attendant disadvantages) could offset that to some extent. And if all the geeks use Red Hat at home, when they go to work they're going to want to use systems they're familiar with, and will push for Red Hat at work.

    Think about what Turbo is saying. "OSS is a great development model, which produces the best-quality software available. That's why we think you should buy Linux. We also think that doesn't apply to us, so buy our Linux because its proprietary software is better than the OSS alternatives." Who would buy that message?

  • Regardless of your aim for humor, I think that #6 is an actual reason that competitor to Linux (ie Microsoft) can point to as a valid issue...

    I don't mind learning new CLI's and GUI's, but that's because I have the will to do it in my spare time. No corp want to retrain all their employees simply to save the $50-$90 per machine that windows costs them, and not many employees are going to volunteer to stay late for a couple weeks just so they can learn to do what they already know how to do...

    KDE and/or GNOME have to be a better "Windows" than Windows for Linux to catch hold of the desktop... I may be getting a little off topic, so i'll stop here. :)
  • Not to beat the GPL Zealot drum too much, but their philosophy disturbs me. I wouldn't buy any of their proprietary extensions to Linux. Not because it makes it so I can't fix problems (I can't; I'm not a programmer) but because it is a LOCK IN. No one except TurboLinux can fix any problems that happen with their cluster server. That's not good any way you look at it. I for one won't support a company that has no problem locking in customers Microsoft-style to their products by using the classic embrace and extend tactic. So let's all do the right thing, and stick it to TurboLinux with dollars by not contributing a cent to their enterprise. If they won't play by our rules, then let's do our best to ensure they don't play at all.

    Just my .02
  • I'm concerned that they plan to be a parasite. From the sound of things they plan to write stuff, but not GPL it.
  • TurboLinux is HUGE in Asia - It's currently outselling Windows there.

    Why did they relocate to the Silicon Valley???

  • currently, MS has the upper hand over Intel - when MS says 'you have to do this and this becasue we want to blah blah on our next version' intel has to listen. Do they like this? I doubt it.

    On the other hand, if they can control which features the OS has, and how it takes advantage of any new features of their chips, they will have a lot more room to change things.

  • ++heavy_sarcasm.

    x86 is 20 years old, Unix is 30 years old. Sheesh why are we living in the past?

    Ever heard of agism, motherfucker? Everybody was whining when MS attacked Unix for its age and then you do this.

  • Yeah, and Win95 is a 32 bit operating system. I wouldn't be suprised if Win64 was actually thunking all the function calls down to 16 bits.

  • ...selling drugs to the brother man instead of the other man...

  • Community spirit need to be there. (Score:4)

    by OA ( 65410 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @10:01PM (#1622413) Homepage
    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.
  • Well, promoting Linux eases their dependence on Microsoft for software to run on the processors...but why is Intel investing in more than one distribution?

    I guess Intel is trying to create another Windows without creating another Microsoft. :)
  • I ran the 3.0 distribution for about 2 months, almost a year ago... (has it been that long??)
    At any rate... It's actually a very nice distribution....
    Installs easily... is very well configured, etc. etc.

    My problem arose in that it's geared for folks that don't
    know beans about Linux.

    I'm competent enough with Linux that I like to configure it
    the way _I_ want it... but I wasn't competent enough
    to install a large number of packages and services
    due to my inability to re-configure all of their
    custom scripts. *shrug*

    Tech support was great though :> Can't beat it.
    E-mail response in a few hours (if not minutes) and
    their own newsgroup as well (not tooo heavily poupulated either)


    Personally I don't have anything against Intel for
    investing in TurboLinux.... I'm not interested in
    either of their products anymore....
    Not intel for a few years... and not TurboLinux for the
    above reasons... *shrug*

    To each their own, though.


  • An alternative option:
    5) they're trying to make a commercial distribution, that corporate mindset will worm its evil^Wnon-GPL way from Intel to the top brass at TurboLinux.

    You might gather I'm not entirely in favour of commercial alliances, only friendly ones...

    Anyway. I tried Turbolinux a while ago, and it was the only thing I've ever had diald and Freeserve working together on (nowadays I don't bother - Debian, pon and poff work well enough!). It wasn't bad, it was version 2.0 ish, and it was RedHat with various deviations like all the turboXXXconfig applets. Oh, and ISTR it set me up with afterstep by default.
    Nothing spectacular, nothing too awful...

    I guess we'll just have to see what comes of the Intel thing...

  • Doesn't anyone here have a problem with the growing number of different Linux distributions out there..? Sure, competition is all well and good up to a point, but wildly diverging Linux distributions could put a lot of new people off due to the complexity of choosing a vendor.

    One thing FreeBSD has always had going for it in my opinion is the unified distribution (this is not meant to be flamebait - just my opinion)

    Do we really need yet another big player in the Linux distro world?

    Q.

  • /*From the sound of things they plan to write stuff, but not GPL it. */

    What a crime. Thats how you can add value to and make money from Linux - write a good config tool, ala YaST from SuSE or EasyLinuxes config tools, and DON'T GPL it, so you aren't ripped off and under cut by rivals ala Redhat vs Mandrake.

    This may offend the idealogically pure. It may also make linux easier to install, configure, and use, and subsidise further Linux development.

    I have seen Linux distros of only free software - they tend to be rougher at the edges, and contain less usable software. There is a reason why Caldera and SuSE sell many copies - and this is it.

    George Russell
  • This topic seems to have fallen into wondering why Intel are doing the investing. The alternatives suggested are (in no particular order) a) diversifying ie. putting money into more that one distribution b) investing in a distribution that puts out commercial apps - cos thats were the money is. c) investing in a distribution that's strong in the Far East.

    All these would appear good reasons for Intel to take a risk. What I was really asking when I posted the original question it what direction TurboLinux would take now it has the backing, and not just in the geographical sense? Do they build on their Asian success and push further into China or are they going to try and complete with Red Hat in North America?

    If I were making the decision I'd choose China, but we don't know who's pulling the strings in this deal.

    Would it be in Intel's interest to have two of their investees fighting one another? Possibly. I've yet to be persuaded that Red Hat's strength is anything other that its ubiquitousness coupled with an extremely good package management system in rpm. It's not the installation procedure that make a distribution good, it's how easy it is to upgrade. Turbo Linux getting a toehold here would be difficult. However the rise of China as a market does seem to be significant especially as the number of new Chinese distributions is on the increase.

    That my twopenneth anyway

  • 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.



    You've got it exactly backwards. If Linux helps people to move to other Intel CPUs it also helps them to move to non-Intel CPUs like PPC, Alpha and MIPS. Intel's greatest intellectual property is its intimate knowledge of optimization techniques for x86 opcodes. If they had to compete purely on performance with Alpha, PPC etc., they would be in a much worse position.



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