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Linux Business

LinuxWorld rundown on CNN, HP and IBM Highlighted 138

Posted by timothy from the still-in-business dept.
Mr.Intel writes: "CNN released a story reviewing LinuxWorld and Linux's progress since last year. They mention new hardware and market niches coming to light in 2001. Mike Balma, a Linux strategist at HP, said 'The move to an increased array of outsourcing, migration and porting services that have been traditionally available to Unix customers is part of the continued rollout of the operating system within HP's product line. Previously, HP had informally offered such integral service and support only to its best Linux customers. But as the operating system gains momentum, more customers are seeking more services.' I hope this means as installed customer base increases, companies like RedHat will start making real money." Archie Steel writes "Interesting news for the Linux Desktop: Open For Business have an article on the partnership by HP and MandrakeSoft announced at the current Linux World Expo." Update: 01/30 16:56 GMT by H : Just a quick note: Rob is gonna be in the Golden Penguin Bowl, while I'm going to be doing a presentation with the Boston Consulting Group about the demographics of open source developers - if you are interested, it's tomorrow (Thursday) from 4:00 - 5:15.
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LinuxWorld rundown on CNN, HP and IBM Highlighted More

LinuxWorld rundown on CNN, HP and IBM Highlighted

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  • Those IBM Infrastructure Commercials (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PowerTroll 5000 ( 524563 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:23AM (#2925241)
    "Linux" is one of the players on the "good guy" Infrastructure team, among other players like "Unix", "Firewall", etc. Even though the terms aren't explained, many people are asking themselves "what are these things?". These commercials hopefully will bring the Linux name out into a more mainstream audience, and even if people don't use it, they'll be aware of its existence.

    It's been a year of "spreading the word". We'll see if in the next year, people start using it.

    • Re:Those IBM Infrastructure Commercials (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Multiple Sanchez ( 16336 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:45AM (#2925340)
      Undoubtedly the best of those IBM ads is the one that in plain Engish answers for a wide audience one of the biggest questions surrounding Linux: one of the execs is watching footage of the "Linux" player, while a second exec is explaining that he plays nearly for free. The first exec asks why on Earth he'd do that, and the second responds, staring at the screen: "Loves the game."

      Great spot.
      • Undoubtedly the best of those IBM ads is the one that in plain Engish answers for a wide audience one of the biggest questions surrounding Linux: one of the execs is watching footage of the "Linux" player, while a second exec is explaining that he plays nearly for free. The first exec asks why on Earth he'd do that, and the second responds, staring at the screen: "Loves the game."

        Has anybody with a video capture card snagged any of the IBM linux ads?

        • Its too bad, you could have gotten this ad from adcritic.com, too bad they went under.. =(

          IBM's ad's always seem to be pretty good, has anyone looked on IBM.com for any of the ads?
      • Yeah, one of the players loves the game. The team he plays on is so unbelievably desperate that it's trying one last-ditch wild ploy before it's goes bankrupt. The rest of the players on the team suck and couldn't get the kind of money a pro ball player gets, but can't admit to themselves.
      • Isn't that Detlef Schrempf? He certainly didn't play for free while in the NBA!

        I wonder if that's a bias towards SuSE ... ;-)
    • The Middleware is classic, too. In the locker room the coach hands out big fat fanmail bags to Mainframe and Linux, and ("oh yeah, I almost forgot") he hands one thin letter to Middleware. In a hilarious twist on the old Mean Joe Green Coke ad (or was it Pepsi? :) from the 1970's, Middleware walks outside and sees a shy, nervous-looking kid and asks him if he wants his autograph. "Um, not really." Even my wife learned and can recite the punchline after Sunday's playoff games: "He seeks not glory. He seeks only results."
    • It's been a year of "spreading the word". We'll see if in the next year, people start using it.


      Bet on it. My mother called and asked if I could help her replace the Windows server farm she has running in the (previously unused) guest bedroom with a single IBM box running that "Linux thing".

    • Anybody have a link to those commerials online?

      I've not seen them, just "The Heist".
  • Sony is coming out with Linux for the Playstation!

    40 GB HD, 100 Mb Ethernet connection...

    *drools* Now, the kids will have to fight the parents for time on the television...

  • Red Hat and Goldman Sachs (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Red Hat has pulled out of the Goldmand Sachs annual meeting. This year it will be in Palm Desert CA.. What does this say about them and their future? Are they afraid of the scrutiny from fund managers from around the world? All the other big players will be there. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, Intel, Microsoft...

    None of them are no shows.
    • Red Hat seems to be in way over its head; they've been overvalued for so long that people overestimate their presence in the IT market. It's entirely possible for Red Hat to make a profit at selling and servicing Linux, but the market just isn't big enough for a supposedly multi-billion dollar company. I don't blame them for keeping their distance from the investment community.

  • Good to see HP commit further. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:29AM (#2925277) Homepage
    I guess the higher-ups at HP have been listening to Perens and Co. Good for them.

    I hope that HP truly supports Mandrakesoft for a push on the desktop. It's one thing to sayt this at Linuxworld with all the Linux geeks in attendance, let's hope they follow through.

    They can start by funding some open source fonts for X. Then they can take all those tons of highly experienced and smart HP-UX and Tru64 guys and dedicate them to kernel development and testing. Throwing a few people at Mozilla wouldn't hurt either. While they're at it, they can help fund KDE/GNOME and hire some people out of the community.

    Am I asking for too much? :)
    • NO, I do not think that it is too much to ask for.


      What you will probably find is that as time goes on, this might become the Linux company's competitive advantage.


      I remember when I was in university [uct.ac.za], our varsity prided itself in employing the highest number of A rated scientists in any educational institution on the continent... or some similar claim.


      Why employ your Co. instead of Co. B would therefore be answered by "we employ 7 of the 10 name-the-program-here core developers!"


      Capitalism at work and benefiting the open source community.

      • Why employ your Co. instead of Co. B would therefore be answered by "we employ 7 of the 10 name-the-program-here core developers!"


        Red Hat's annual report mentions the number of kernel hackers they employ.



        And Mandrake rarely hesitates to mention that Jay Beale (one of the two lead developers of Bastille Linux) is on their payroll.

    • >>"Then they can take all those tons of highly experienced and smart HP-UX and Tru64 guys and dedicate them to kernel development and testing"

      Uhh, Tru64 is owned and developed by Compaq. Unless of course you think that the merger will go through. Then, you're basically correct. I, of course would like to see some of the features from Tru64 ported, like the VMS style clustering. THAT would rock!

    • They can start by...

      releasing Chai as open source?

      The other great app, for those who might remember HP calculators from a couple of decades back, is

      xhpcalc
      I loved that app, and haven't found an equal in functionality or polish, despite all the development that's taken place for Gnome and KDE.
      • Indeed! xhpcalc is the best calculator program I have ever seen. By a long margin.

        HP would make themselves very popular by releasing the source code for that thing, considering that they dropped it as long ago as the release of HP-UX 10.0 and that even so people still preserve it when installing new machines or OS versions.

        Unfortunately, I suspect that xhpcalc literally emulates the calculators in question using their original code ROM images. That probably means it's very unlikely to ever see the light of day again, even if they can still find a backup tape containing the source.
      • Don't forget that we have a number of Open Source Java-compatible VMs today. Speaking for myself as a free software evangelist, and obviously not speaking in my HP role, I'd rather see the work go into the ones that are already free. But I can't win every fight.

        Bruce

    • It would be nice if this commitment would not be undermined by other things they do. For instance, go to this HP-UX server configuration page [hp.com] and try to configure one. You don't need to log in, you can do it as a guest user. Or at least, you can do it if your browser is deemed worthy. Right now, I'm using Netscape on an HP-UX box, but even so it refuses to my business into consideration.


      I sure am hoping that this is not the way their Linux commitment will be implemented...

    • I'm sorry, but hasn't HP been saying that they are /exiting/ the desktop?

    • HP talks a good Linux, but does approximately nil to further the cause, or even make their products work with Linux.

      I like HP inkjet printers. I strongly believe they're more reliable than Epson's. But I've bought three Epson printers in the last two years, only because they worked better (or at all) with Linux.

      Please, Slashdot, don't feed the marketroids. HP's lack of Linux action is surpassed only by Microsoft's.
      • HP talks a good Linux, but does approximately nil to further the cause, or even make their products work with Linux.

        I like HP inkjet printers. I strongly believe they're more reliable than Epson's. But I've bought three Epson printers in the last two years, only because they worked better (or at all) with Linux.

        HP devlopers wrote a printer driver for Linux. It was initially released with a license similar to the BSD license, with an extra clause saying that to use it you needed to own an HP printer. They promised to have their lawyers make sure they were clear on patent issues, and then drop the extra clause if possible. Guess what, they did drop it, and now it is available as a purely free piece of software. (Get it here [sourceforge.net].)

        This makes HP the only company to have released a free software driver for its products. Linux has excellent support for Epson printers, but Epson didn't do the work.

        If you want to print photos, you are still better off under Linux with an Epson, because none of the Linux drivers for HP DeskJet printers support the 2400x1200 DPI photo printing mode yet. But it is just a matter of time. I'm hoping that HP will add that themselves to their own free driver.

        If 600x600 DPI color printing is enough for you, you can use the HP DeskJet with Linux.

        steveha
    • HP actually has a contract to develop GNOME... on HP-UX! All of the code goes back to all versions, of course.

      HP supports all major distributions, but the really new thing here is the desktop. Multinational corporation has a partnership to build a Linux desktop, when they have a big $$$ business with Microsoft. Wow. A year ago, I couldn't get anyone at HP or IBM to believe in the Linux desktop.

      Fonts? If you ask me, I'd put making a robust, easy to install and use, desktop first, and then go for esthetics once that's stable. But I'd love to hear your argument, and your choice of font mechanism.

      Alas, I am not at LinuxWorld. Valerie had surgery today. She's OK, thank goodness. We had a difficult week.

      Bruce

  • Start spreadin... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gehenna_Gehenna ( 207096 ) <cavanetten AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:32AM (#2925285) Homepage
    The News...
    I'm leaving Friday
    I took my first vacation day
    Linux World New York

    These Win2k blues
    Are melting Away
    I want to be a part of it
    Linux World, New York

    I want to walk up
    and down the ailles collecting Shwag
    Until my backpack is full
    should be some fun
    but if it sucks
    I can watch Protesting Punks

    THEEEEEEESE Gates inspired blues
    are MELTING awaaayyy
    I want to see the PS2
    in 'ol New York

    If I can
    Make it there
    Then I can make it

    uhh..

    There

    It's up to you
    Linux World
    New York.

    • 1) Friday is the worst day for freebs. They are all gone.

      2) Today was really bad for schwag, as expected in the economic downturn. Picture what won't be left on Friday.

      3) They're not even throwing an after-show party on the galleria, like they did in previous years.

      4) You're on the wrong side of the island to see protesting punks. (but I was rotfl when I read it.)

      5) There is a dotbomb pall over the show this year. And its not Gates inspired either.
      • Yeah, I figured as much. Still, this is my first Linux World and there are a few things I am looking foreward to like:

        1. Actually meeting another serious linux user.

        2. Shaking the hands of all the good folks at Mandrake Linux and thank them for helping make the windows to linux transition so painless.

        3. The Protesting Punks are REALLY close to Grand Central, and the Waldorf is directly accross from one of the buildings I do Tech Support for. Watching punks get arrested is an option.

  • HP's utility pricing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by skinnymofo ( 211149 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:36AM (#2925301) Homepage
    In the article it mentions that HP is going to begin using 'utility pricing', what you pay is determined by how much you use Linux.
    My question is, how are they going to measure how much you 'use' Linux? Number of users, number of applications, number of machines?
    It sounds a lot like Oracle's pricing plan whereby the charge per CPU power.

    _

    • Re:HP's utility pricing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by birder ( 61402 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:41AM (#2925314) Homepage
      In the world of mainframe and Unix farms, a lot of companies sell their products based on 'server class' or number of CPUs besides Oracle.

      In big business, when a company asks "how much", the vendor says "How much do you have". They know companines that can afford million dollar servers will shell out more for the same thing.
    • I'm a little concerned also...What happens if you're running something like the SETI client? I have a Linux box running as an MP3 server, and keep the SETI client going as well....This utility pricing could really hurt...
    • It is possible they could employ the pricing scheme [hp.com] they currently use for the high end 'Superdome' servers.
      - pay per forecast: pay for capacity based on planned usage
      - capacity on demand: purchase excess capacity when activated
      - pay per use: pay for additional capacity based on metered usage

      In HP-UX, these are tools (PRM [hp.com], Workload Manager [hp.com]) that allow process tracking and balancing.
    • Utility pricing is for hardware - you can have a machine sit around until you need it, and not pay for it until you do. Obviously, we can't charge utility pricing for a Free operating system, only for the hardware it runs on. The point is that Linux-running hardware is now part of the program.

      Bruce

  • Support services (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Diabolical ( 2110 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:42AM (#2925323) Homepage
    It seems like companies such as LinuxCare were too early offering the now needed services.. It's nice to see though that demand for Linux is increasing. This should give new companies a momentum that they need to gain a piece of the market.

    Of course it's important to stay levelheaded and don't try to be too big too soon as was one of LC's problems...

    "What we're seeing is the maturation of the market," Schescherareg said. "That's really nothing but good news."


    This is a very important point. As linux evolves companies are begining to see a mature market where wannabee's and showoff's are a minority. They finally start taking Linux serious. In the Netherlands, where i happen to live, Linux is still mostly used by academia or enthousiasts. Few companies are available offering things like support and services. One of the most important ones over here, Stone IT, almost dissapeared from the market. So hopefully some of the companies working worldwide will start lookin at local services or help so that the market over here can have a boost as well.....
  • [...] companies like RedHat will start making real money.
    I had no idea 'companies like RedHat' made counterfeit money. Or maybe in the past they've been payed in monopoly money?

    We should be told!

    • Or maybe in the past they've been payed in monopoly money?

      It might as well be. Equity in stock which is not backed up by corporate value is basically counterfeit -- good only as long as nobody notices that it's not real.

      Not that RedHat is a worthless company, mind you, but its stock was clearly overvalued during the Linux boom.

  • Utility Pricing flies in the face of Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)

    by A Commentor ( 459578 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @10:43AM (#2925325) Homepage

    Also new for HP is utility pricing, which is now being offered to Linux customers, allowing them to pay for the operating system based on usage -- rather than standard licensing fees. Lower usage means lower fees, while higher usage would bring higher fees for customers.

    "This is part of an overall strategy for HP," Balma said. "We firmly believe that utility pricing is the way to go."



    So if I actually want to use the system I have, I have to pay more money? How is this any different from being charged for how much you use your TV/Microwave/Wash-machine? Unbelievable....

    • HPs target market for utility pricing on Linux is the same people who pay for it on Unix. They're simply moving it onto a equal footing.

      From a corporate adoption point of view, this is good. It says, "The company can buy reliable Linux computing service," in a way that can be measured by costs and contracts.

      A lot of EDA software is priced according to the speed of the system it runs on. Same thing.
    • Don't forget that HP is doing hosting for it's bigger customer. So I would not be surprised that this is what they are referring to.

      They could also make this part of their support contract. It is not unusual to charge on a per use basis for everything services...

      • So, how is this setup going to be better than using the usual M$ setup? They still pay out the ears. You have to remember the target audience is enterprise/business. Although they are used to spending money hand over fist, they are looking to the financial benefits that Linux can provide.
    • Nope. If you want HP to support the system you have, you have to pay more money. What's the problem with that?
    • ...allowing them to pay for the operating system based on usage...

      I wonder if HP will try to patent that.

      Lower usage means lower fees, while higher usage would bring higher fees for customers.

      What rocket scientists are writing this?

      What's scary is, I'll bet HP will patent the "lower usage means lower fees" with regards to usage-based licensing systems.

      Is this a joke? Or a blatant insult to the intelligences of those who have them...
    • Utility pricing is for hardware, not software. The point here is that the program is now extended to Linux-running hardware. You can have a machine sit around until you need it, and not pay for it until then.

      Bruce

  • More important than HP or IBM (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Will the BSD chicks be there this year?

  • Great, HP... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now, when will you release drivers for Linux that support Deskjet printers at their best resolution. Having Ghostscript drive them at 300dpi is nice, but unimpressive.

    And where are those drivers for your USB and Parallel scanners?

    Your hardware supports Windows and Macintosh. Even if you don't supply the drivers, could you at least release the specs so that some open source people can do it themselves? SANE supports SOME HP Scanners. But what about the others?
    • We haveare Free Softw drivers for the PSC-950 multifunction unit on USB - it print and scans from Linux. I have one here. It does some cool stand-alone stuff with camera memory cartriges, too. It prints a proof sheet, and then you can check photo orders on the proof sheet, scan it, and it will fulill the order! We have Free Software drivers for other USB and parallel units too, but not every one. We're working on some of them. A few, very few, HP printers have embedded intellectual property from a big company that doesn't like Linux, and those may never have drivers. The newer printers are intended to be "net" printers, and have more intelligence onboard, including, in some cases, PhotoREIT. This makes them easier to drive from Linux.

      Bruce

  • Best Qoute (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ScumBiker ( 64143 ) <scumbiker@jweng e r . o rg> on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @11:00AM (#2925405) Homepage Journal
    "What we're seeing is the maturation of the market," Schescherareg said. "That's really nothing but good news.". This says a lot to me and, more importantly, to my Boss. Events like this and the fact that major players are giving Linux the attention it deserves is finally allowing me to get a test box setup here in house. This is a major step ahead for a network that authenticates to an NT domain, runs NT4.0 on the desktop, is slowy (glacially) migrating servers to Win2k, and runs Tru64 on Alpha gear for the Oracle geeks. I can't wait to start the CD spindles turning!
  • It's a very Good Thing(tm) that companies like HP are lending their support to Linux. In order to get a more widespread adoption of Linux in the business world, it will be necessary to provide extensive and reliable support, like HP is promising now.

    I know that some companies are allready giving good Linux support (RedHat comes to mind) but for the PHB's it's very important that a big company name like HP stands behind these promises. It will make it easier for them to convince upper management that Linux is a viable choice for more than it's pricing.

  • Does HP's commitment to Debian mean that Debian will have the same (or similar) exposure as Mandrake in HP's desktop line?

    Or does HP consider that Debian is (not yet) adequate to the desktop?

    Bruce?
    • IMHO, probably not.
      On Day 1, the Manrake booth was prominently featured, and had friendly people working there with demos. At the Debian booth, the guys were secluded in the corner, bent over PCs, in the console (unlike every other computer there basically, which was running X), hacking/coding/whatever. Which do you think HP would want on the desktop? The nice, GUI, Mandrake image, or the hacker, console, Debian image? This is not a bash on Mandrake or Debian, it's just that one is more suited twords the common user than the other.
    • Let's please concentrate on getting a desktop on which the naive user can do all of their typical work-load using Free Software alone. Then, we can have it on all distributions. We need to address some ease-of-use and installation issues.

      At the moment, Debian is not the best way to support the naive user. It's not really the community that the Debian developers are writing for - although there are exceptions among them. Debian developers, in general, make Debian for themselves and people like themselves. This is something I've always regretted, and I want to do more about it.

      Thanks

      Bruce

  • I looked over the list of exhibitors and noticed that Slackware, SuSE, Turbolinux and (maybe less important) Oracle are missing. This can't be good...

  • Wow (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by NiftyNews ( 537829 )
    Wow, an article about a tradeshow.

    What is the world could be more exciting than that? I feel like I'm right there, sitting in on the lectures in my uncomfortable chair!

  • IBM, HP and Dreamworks (Score:4, Informative)

    by Krieger ( 7750 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @12:27PM (#2925898) Homepage
    There's an article on ZDNet that talks about IBM already re-couping it's one billion dollar investment in Linux.

    http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-825823.html [com.com]

    As well as Dreamworks switching over to HP and Linux.

    http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-826047.html [com.com]

    • Interestingly, Dreamworks claimed one of their problems was that Adobe wouldn't port photoshop to Linux. One wonders if they have heard of Gimp - surely it couldn't be THAT far behind Photoshop (though I'm not a heavy user of either app) as to be useless to them. Makes me also wonder why HP wasn't pushing that. (Although it's possible they had a lot of scripts for Photoshop already? Anyone know?)
      Zorn
      • If I had to guess I would say plug-ins is probably the problem. A lot of the custom work that Dreamworks does no doubt involves specific plug-ins for Photoshop. No Photoshop on Linux, no custom plug-ins for them to work with. It would be interesting to see them port them to the GIMP, but I seriously doubt that they're going to do that anytime soon.
  • ...How is the SCHWAG?

    Seriously... should I bother to come up from Philly? :)

  • Linux Schminux.... (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by ellem ( 147712 )
    Are the FreeBSD Grrls their in their red latex catsuits?

    (LaTex, it's not just for text processing anymore!)

  • I'm surprised no one else mentioned this.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2002 @03:29PM (#2926972) Homepage


    IBM officially switched over to its new CEO the other day, allowing Lou Gerstner to retire. The guy taking over for him, Sam Palmisano, is a big Linux advocate, and is largely responsible for pushing IBM's Linux initiative internally in the past year or so. Looks like there will be good times ahead for us..

    The dot-com bubble burst took alot of the steam out of the movement..Glad to see Big Blue pick up the flag and keep marching, hm?
    • Here's IBM's press release....
      http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/42CE5E C91D7983B985256B500058A102 [ibm.com]

      Here's a quote:

      The IBM board of directors today elected Samuel J. Palmisano chief executive officer of the company effective March 1.

      ...
      Mr. Palmisano ... [as] head of IBM's server and enterprise storage businesses, ... spearheaded a major initiative to embrace Linux, the open source software, across IBM's server line. Today all of IBM's hardware and software products support Linux.


      Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft. Nobody ever looked ignorant for choosing Linux.

  • I like the news.cnet.com LinuxWorld 2002 Special Report [com.com] coverage better than the links in the story above. Enjoy!

  • I went to Linux World Expo today..it was great not to mention all the free stuff I got like a trial version of kylix on cd. I'm going again.
  • Tux Pez dispenser from Compaq
  • ah, this'll make my next PC purchase much easier. saves me a lot of trouble.

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