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Linux Business

Linux Spreads its Wings 234

Posted by CmdrTaco from the like-a-beautiful-butterfly dept.
securitas writes "Businessweek's 'Linux Spreads its Wings' Special Report discusses the growing use of Linux in a wide range of products that include mobile phones, cars, telecom gear and consumer electronics; Linux in China; an analysis of the SCO litigation; a look at how Novell's Linux strategy may bring the struggling, former technology high-flyer back from the dead, as well as other articles and interviews related to the growth and spread of Linux as a viable platform for both enterprise and consumer technology."
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Linux Spreads its Wings More

Linux Spreads its Wings

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  • For women? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:47AM (#8917480)

    It sounds too much like a maxi pad commercial. "New OS, with wings. For those heavier data flow days..."

    • Linux: Strong enough for a man (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      PH balanced for a wind0ze luser
    • Hmm.. I was thinking about this sort of thing the other day... I remember when all the commercials were propping up their pads, stating how thin and narrow they were, and now, the same companies are promoting thicker, wider pads because the thin, narrow ones don't provide as much "protection." Geez, it's sorta like how Norton write viruses to keep their Antivirus software selling.

  • Grrr (Score:5, Funny)

    by JamesD_UK ( 721413 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:47AM (#8917483) Homepage
    That's it! I'm fed up with the popular media misunderstanding linux and the free software movement. It is quite obvious if you've had the time to do any research that penguins swim and don't fly.

    • Re:Grrr (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mateito ( 746185 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:58AM (#8917638) Homepage
      They do if you hit them [booba.org] hard enough.

    • Re:Grrr (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tamnir ( 230394 )
      That's it! I'm fed up with the popular media misunderstanding linux and the free software movement. It is quite obvious if you've had the time to do any research that penguins swim and don't fly.

      Indeed. So I guess the title of the story should be: Linux Spreads its... Fins? Hmmm.... ;-)

    • Re:Grrr (Score:3, Informative)

      by wobblie ( 191824 )
      They still have wings, dude. They swim with their wings. Well you can call them flippers if you want, but since it's a bird, they're actually wings, and you would be committing a taxonomical abomination.

      • Re:Grrr (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jc42 ( 318812 )
        Heh. You're right of course. It's standard bio textbook fodder to observe that penguins do actually "fly", in a liquid medium rather than gaseous. They're similar in a lot of ways, but the two fluids do have somewhat different physical properties. For that matter, a lot of birds that fly in the air (ducks, cormorants) also "fly" underwater, using their wings for propulsion at least part of the time. Their wings just aren't very well-adapted for flying through a liquid, so most of them also have those fee
        • Penguins can also flop down on their bellies and propell themselves across the ice/snow with their flippers. They travel in groups, single file, and can cover considerable distances at impressive speeds (compared to waddling, at least). I have seen this in a TV documentary but cannot find much about it on the web.
    • ...in so many ways...

      Anyway, penguins DO have wings (not fins) and they fly through water (not air). We call it swimming since it takes place in the water, but from a physical viewpoint, the bird is flying.

    • Re:Grrr (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Black Rabbit ( 236299 )
      But penguins most certainly do fly. It's just that the medium they fly in is water, not air. If you have ever seen footage of what penguins look like when they're in the water, it looks very similar to any other bird in the air.
    • They do when you get them going fast enough down an ice covered mountain slope:

      TuxRacer [tuxracer.com]

    • A few years back, I witnessed an amazing sight. That's right, I saw penguins fly.

      After attending a conference in San Diego, I snagged a Southwest Airlines flight home to Sacramento. The flight attendants, as usual, were perky and excited; but they also let me know as I boarded the plane that a surprise was in store.

      (get your mind out of the gutter!)

      After takeoff, the announcement came over the loudspeaker:

      "We are very pleased to have some special passengers with us on Southwest today! Two penguins on

  • This is extremely bad news (Score:4, Funny)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:48AM (#8917487) Homepage Journal
    Penguins can't fly, you insensitive clod.

  • SCO taking a beating? (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:49AM (#8917505)
    SCO's stock [yahoo.com] seems to be taking a beating this morning. Any ideas as to why?

    • Re:SCO taking a beating? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MyHair ( 589485 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:22PM (#8917971) Journal
      Probably because Baystar wants their $20mil back, RBC is expected to follow this week wanting their $30mil back, both with 20% penalties against SCO, nobody else will loan SCO money after major investors wanting their money back and SCO doesn't have enough to pay them back, much less continue the lawsuits afterward. Oh, and they don't seem to have many actual revenue-generating customers anymore.

      Speculation considers that most of SCO's assets could be frozen pending settlement with Baystar/RBC assuming SCO fights the redemption claim.

      But I wouldn't be surprised to see SCO spin an up story for a week or two and have the stock jump again before everything crumbles in two weeks to a few months.
    • Someone finally found out they have no buisness model.

  • Heh (Score:4, Funny)

    by Pizentios ( 772582 ) <pizentios@gLIONmail.com minus cat> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:49AM (#8917508)
    Soon, i'll beable to put linux on my toaster.
    • Did that, last year. Now I'm trying to put it on my MP3 player and my clock radio.
    • "Soon, i'll beable to put linux on my toaster."

      And then you'll have to recompile the kernel whenever you want a poptart rather then toast.

    • Well, we already have Toasters [jwz.org] (no direct link, but search for FlyingToasters) on Linux. Might as well have it the other way around...

  • Why Linux will beat MS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:53AM (#8917565)
    Because MS is not competing with an operating system, they are competing with a paradigm. MS may have a market cap of half a trillion dollars, but the US economy puts out 12 trillion per year alone. If push comes to shove, it won't matter how big MS is - they will get squished like a bug. I renember when IBM spent billions back in the 80's to push the PS/2 (not playstation) on the market place to try and squeese out the x86's already out there. It didn't matter how big they were either, they got hammered.

    • Re:Why Linux will beat MS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @11:59AM (#8917642) Homepage Journal
      I don't know if I believe the Linux will be what takes down M$. Maybe open source will make a dent but Linux is not all of open source. You forget that there are a lot of projects that will impact that are not linux. And don't forget the BSDs (especially FreeBSD).

      Think of it like a country with a 1 party political system. Then another one grows up from the grass roots. THe ordigional will never go away because there will always be die hards for it. M$ won't get squashed they will just have to compete in a market where they had no competition before.

      • Re:Why Linux will beat MS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by argoff ( 142580 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:11PM (#8917805)
        FreeBSD allows forking pretty easially, Linux doesn't - so FreeBSD is less able to take exploit the fact that information is becomming commoditized. One of the consequences of being in the information age is that information is becomming commoditized, it has been for a long time, but now it's really taking off.

        When a market becomes commoditized, that means that services tend to become more valuable than the item being traded. Translation - industries that rely on copyrights to restrict distribution and drive up profits are dead.
        • Google doesn't have a buzzword-to-english translator, and none of you sentences seem to be related to any of the others.

          I'm guessing it's modded insightful just because it says copyrights are bad.

          • Thank you. I was lost after the first clause ("FreeBSD allows forking pretty easially, Linux doesn't" - huh?), but was thinking maybe I missed something vital so I kept my mouth shut. I have no idea what point he was trying to make.

            • I was lost after the first clause ("FreeBSD allows forking pretty easially, Linux doesn't" - huh?), but was thinking maybe I missed something vital so I kept my mouth shut.

              There is a certain truth to this. I can take a FreeBSD release, alter it and relicense it so that it can't be merged back into FreeBSD, allowing a permanent fork to occur. The GPL doesn't allow you to relicense the Linux codebase with the same freedom, so even when Linux kernel development forks, the forks can always be merged back int

              • There is a certain truth to this. I can take a FreeBSD release, alter it and relicense it so that it can't be merged back into FreeBSD, allowing a peranent fork to occur.

                Nah. Anyone can fork, any time, practically anything if you have the source code; sometimes it will be legal too. That's not interesting. What's interesting is whether the fork survives. Why would anyone else contribute to your branch when there's a main branch that *you've* left?

                All I can say is that had better be one MOFA branch.

                • Nah. Anyone can fork, any time, practically anything if you have the source code; sometimes it will be legal too. That's not interesting. What's interesting is whether the fork survives. Why would anyone else contribute to your branch when there's a main branch that *you've* left?

                  You're missing the point (or I'm not making myself clear enough, which is always possible).

                  Forking is only a problem IF you can't take the code in the new fork and put it back into the original project. I can give you two reall

    • Re:Why Linux will beat MS (Score:5, Funny)

      by the_rev_matt ( 239420 ) <slashbot AT revmatt DOT com> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:02PM (#8917692) Homepage
      You obviously are not an MBA or marketing type. I can tell, because you used the word "paradigm" properly.
    • maybe the problem was that ps/2 WAS x86, eh?
      basically when they were pushing ps/2 they were pushing all the other x86's forward as well.

      my computer still has ps/2 style ports for keyboard and mouse.

      • The story that I herd was that IBM was in a hurry to get a PC out on the marketplace becuase all of a sudden these small pc's with integrated circuits were competing with their mainframes - so they put together a PC where you could easially interchange the parts (the x86), that way they could mass produce it quickly. However, Compaq reverse engineered the bios, AMD created a clone CPU, and every other vendor started making things compatable with the slots, and drives.

        IBM just assumed that they could restr
    • Because MS is not competing with an operating system, they are competing with a paradigm.

      The migration from big iron and Unix to Linux and commodity x86 servers may count as a paradigm shift but it is not at all clear how much that really threatens Microsoft.

      This quote from the founder of Netscape caught my attention:

      Then you have this whole universe of people in smaller businesses who are used to Microsoft. ... I would say Microsoft has a really big advantage in small and medium-size business. They hav

    • You sound like Slashdot did when I used to visit it in high school back in 1998. Linux was going to "squash M$" because they couldn't beat back a "paradigm."

      Meanwhile, what's ignored is that paying for software gives financial incentive for programmers to spend all day ironing out that interface, making that sound card work, etc. and generally working on the non-fun areas in which Linux is sorely behind. It also lets them quit their dayjobs so they can focus all their time and energy on finishing the pro

      • You sound like the SCO folks did back in 98 ... they would say things like "well, Linux is for hobbiests, but not enterprise class like SCO" - yeah right.

        Linux has nothing to do with hobbiests, it has to do with free markets and Microsoft has nothing to do with free markets - they half to do with a special government granted monopoly called copyrights. Like any monopoly that gets truely challenged, the consequences are similar and predictable.

      • Meanwhile, what's ignored is that paying for software gives financial incentive for programmers to spend all day ironing out that interface, making that sound card work, etc. and generally working on the non-fun areas in which Linux is sorely behind

        This is the flipside of what he is saying. He said that linux uses a different paradigm from microsoft. You have just described what the Microsoft paradigm is, how it differs from the linux paradigm and what its advantages are. Thank you, this is a much better j

  • a look at how Novell's Linux strategy may bring the struggling, former technology high-flyer back from the dead,

    Just like it did for SCO and Corel!

  • ARGH (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jmays ( 450770 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:00PM (#8917651)
    This is the same old TYPE of article we have been reading for the past three years. A status article.

    I now LOATHE Slashdot everytime I see an article about Linux either 'spreading it wings' or an article with the gist 'linux is dying'.

    These STATUS articles are unbearable.

    If I want to know the Linux, Windows or OS X market share I will look it up!

    This is a random rant so feel free to mod mod mod.
    • This is a random rant so feel free to mod mod mod.

      I would, but I couldn't find "Bitchy". (Would that be a +1 or -1?)

      :-)

      • :) I agree ... it is bitchy. I would like to see more articles about new and high technology then status articles though. *shrug* Even perhaps new Linux projects and the innovations within.

    • Re:ARGH (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EisPick ( 29965 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:55PM (#8918433)
      The content of the article may be "the same old," but it is important that this is running in Business Week, which is probably the most read magazine among corporate executives and wannabes.

      It's articles like this that prod CEOs and CIOs to ask their staffs, "Why aren't we using Linux more?" Or they at least make executives more receptive to staff proposals that incorporate OSS.

      If we're ever going to get to a tipping point where OSS is the first choice and MS "standards" are a second choice, more articles like this are needed in BW, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes.
      • Does this mean every last 'same old' status article printed in BW, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and/or Forbes should be reported on and editorialized by Slashdot?

        No. And if I am alone in this, so be it.
    • If I want to know the Linux, Windows or OS X market share I will look it up!

      But isn't that the problem with these sweeping generalizations? You never get to see the numbers which support them.

      • Yes, and I wish I could mod you insightful.

        Concrete and/or even properly researched numbers and facts are indeed rare.

    • Re:ARGH (Score:4, Funny)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @05:58PM (#8922629)
      Come now. Yesterday Linux was dying because one sound card did not work WITH NINE DIFFERENT DISTROS.

      Today Linux is alive and well and thriving.

      You mean to tell me that this kind of dramatic turnaround is not news? Linux came back from the brink of death to picture of health in ONE DAY.

      Now that's news!

  • Coders? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:02PM (#8917689)
    What I'm wondering is if the Linux coders feel like real schmoes right about now because lots and lots of companies and people are making fortunes off of their work, and all they get is maybe one line in a hidden readme file that nobody will read? I know this'll get modded down, but I'm really curious. I know that if I did some work, then it was taken and used by lots of people to make lots of money, and I didn't even get a "thanks", I know I'd be pretty pissed off. Of course, they knew this going in, so why exactly do OSS people do this? It makes no sense.

    • Re:Coders? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:09PM (#8917783) Homepage Journal
      "so why exactly do OSS people do this?(he means work for little to no recognition or money) It makes no sense."

      I would have to say there are several reasons. Some people work for a foundation like Linus. Others work for companies like IBM and get paid. Others may write it because it makes thier job easier. I worked with someone who contributed but the only things he wrote were things that made his job easier. Those who make little to no money for it though and do it on the side I will just never understand.

    • Re:Coders? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bile ( 169020 )
      Because many of us don't care. I code for a living. When I code for my own entertainment I don't care if someone else makes money with it. I just care when the company I work for makes money from the code I write. If I cared about others using my code to make money I would either not release it, place it under a license that didn't allow it, or sell it.

    • Re:Coders? (Score:5, Funny)

      by ninjadroid ( 622900 ) <ninjadroid@ELIOTgazuga.net minus poet> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:19PM (#8917918) Homepage
      Because we have massive balls.

    • Re:Coders? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wobblie ( 191824 )
      Dumbshit - it means they now have JOBS doing what they like, as opposed to jobs working on some POS like windows, or flipping burgers at McDonalds. Who the hell do you think these companies hire? Nobodies? Or do they try to recruit the people who've been hacking the drivers for the last few years? Get it? Do you realize how important it is to have a job doing something you love doing? If not, watch "Office Space" at least ten thousand times.

      In most cases, they're getting a lot for their contributions,

    • Re:Coders? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MyHair ( 589485 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:30PM (#8918077) Journal
      You think Linux and OSS coders feel like schmoes?

      Let's see, they are independent coders who know the ins and outs of popular business software that's making money. If you're a company making money off of Linux/OSS and you need help debugging or customizing your implementation, who are you gonna hire?
    • ...I don't see anyone making fortunes out of Linux, at least not because they are using Linux per se. Delivering good value add-ons was always worth something, regardless of the underlying OS. I don't think you want to try to compare the earnings to the manhours of it either, for every dollar they make maybe .000000000002$ is a result of your code, distributed over the millions of lines of code.

      In fact, most GPL coders see some payback because companies have to contribute their code back, if they distribut

    • Re:Coders? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:43PM (#8918272) Homepage Journal
      I know that if I did some work, then it was taken and used by lots of people to make lots of money, and I didn't even get a "thanks", I know I'd be pretty pissed off.

      I've [openoffice.org] already [debian.org] been [mozilla.org] thanked [freebsd.org].

      Now [honeypot.net] I'm [honeypot.net] saying [honeypot.net] "you're [honeypot.net] welcome." [honeypot.net]

      There are other currency systems than "money", you know.

    • Re:Coders? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:51PM (#8918367)


      What I'm wondering is if the Linux coders feel like real schmoes right about now because lots and lots of companies and people are making fortunes off of their work, and all they get is maybe one line in a hidden readme file that nobody will read?

      Just think of all the schmoes who got paid cut-rate wages to produce software for companies who then turn around and make fortunes off of their work. And they don't even have code to show for it. But hey - they knew that was the trade-off when they went in, right?

    • Re:Coders? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by imroy ( 755 ) <imroykun@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:53PM (#8918395) Homepage Journal
      I know that if I did some work, then it was taken and used by lots of people...

      There's your problem right there. You're using emotive language and I wouldn't be surprised to see you modded down because of it. A person can't really take something when it's already been given away, now can they?

      Why do people write OSS? I just don't understand this question. I mean, is it that hard for people to understand someone wanting to contribute to a community project? It's not such an alien concept. Is it so different just because it involves writing software, instead of helping out at a local school or non-profit organization?

    • Re:Coders? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CommandNotFound ( 571326 )
      For many of these coders, they have opportunities (job and otherwise) they may never have gotten by working in a corporate environment or by shrink-wrapping their software. Check out the recent Fortune write-up of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) founders. Had any of these packages been closed $199 packages, we probably would never have heard of them, and Microsoft or Oracle would have abolished them all by now.

      Also, consider Marcelo Tosatti, who is the maintainer of the 2.4 kernel series. This was

    • Re:Coders? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:14PM (#8918756) Homepage Journal
      Well, getting a line of credit is more credit than I've gotten for most proprietary software that I've written. It's common practice in the corporate world to strip out all such credits from their software (especially the binaries), and replace them with a simple corporate claim.

      Now, it may be true that I got paid to write those. But a lot of people are interested in more than just money. Fame, honor, and "Hey dummy, you should have done it this way ..." comments are worth a lot to some of us.

      One of the widespread misunderstandings is that people are only motivated by money. The economists who believe this can't understand things like Open Source (and charitable organizations). But to those of us who understand that humans can have a lot of different motivations, including things like "honor", it's easy to explain such mysterious behavior.

      Remember a couple of years back, when the OSS crowd got all upset with Sun including some Open Source software in their distributions? People weren't upset that Sun did this. They were mostly rather pleased, in fact. What was unacceptable was that Sun stripped out the credits from the code and documentation. That put Sun on our sh*t list, until they put the credits back in. Using something that is given away is fine; that's why it's given away. But refusing to give credit is unforgivable.

      For an interesting example, look at the man pages on linux or BSD systems, and compare them with the man pages on commercial unix-like systems. With linux and *BSD, most of the man pages have an AUTHOR(S) section telling you who wrote it, though sometimes the person's name is in another section near the end. In commercial *nix systems, the man pages usually contain a corporate copyright notice but not the author name(s), though sometimes an actual human name does slip through.

    • Re:Coders? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @09:07PM (#8924238) Homepage
      What I'm wondering is if the Linux coders feel like real schmoes right about now because lots and lots of companies and people are making fortunes off of their work, and all they get is maybe one line in a hidden readme file that nobody will read? I know this'll get modded down, but I'm really curious. I know that if I did some work, then it was taken and used by lots of people to make lots of money, and I didn't even get a "thanks", I know I'd be pretty pissed off. Of course, they knew this going in, so why exactly do OSS people do this? It makes no sense.

      Ok, I'll attempt an answer. I'll be honest and admit that I'm an insignificant contributor. In the grand scheme of things I rate slightly lower than a slug's belly. But I've still put in a fair few hours. Why do I do it? Because in return I've received the equivalent of over $15,000 of s'ware on my desktop alone. Even better, my licenses for Linux (including BSD, GPL, ART) permit unlimited copies. I can install software whenever and where ever I feel like it, without going through the hassle of paying some obscure company and getting a silly number that makes the software work.

      The incredible thing is that when you have a million developers all providing insignificant little contributions, you get a very significant end product. I'm not saying that all developers are insignificant - some Linux developers have contributed far more than anybody else - but the concept is true for the rest of us: I give a little and I receive a lot. I get back far more than I put in. So I'm willing to keep putting something back in. I don't need thanks (nor would I expect any considering my insignificance) because all this great software is even better.

      Now if I worked on BSD code I'd probably feel differently. Those guys are exploited schmucks ;-D

  • Linux installs now easier than ever (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scumbucket ( 680352 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:02PM (#8917691)
    The growth may be attributed to the ease of installing Linux from a CD-ROM based install script. I certainly have found it the easiest and fastest way to install a linux distro - and now with apt-get, installing applications onto Linux has been made easier as well.

  • Does that mean this is The Year Of Linux?

  • Linux is becoming the standard interface (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:03PM (#8917702)
    ...between hardware and software.

    It runs on (almost) all hardware architectures and supports a huge open-source application library which can be recompiled for all hardware architectures.

    Mindshare, application library and number of users will continue to increase in all computing, yes even on the desktop.

    • With all due respect to your thoughts, "Score:5, Insightful" my ass.

      "It runs on (almost) all hardware architectures and supports a huge open-source application library which can be recompiled for all hardware architectures."

      Absolutely true and absolutely meaningless unless multi-purpose PCs drop dead and are all replaced by specialized Linux-based thin clients that the other 97.5% of the public market will use.

      "Mindshare, application library and number of users will continue to increase in all computi

  • Linux spreads it's wings, but not to the Desktop? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrNybbles ( 618800 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:16PM (#8917865) Journal
    Using Linux in embeded products is one of the strong points of Linux: no directly messing with the Kernel by the user (no compiling, no inserting modules, no figuring out what exact chipset your sound card is, etc.) This makes Linux easy to use by anyone. Of course being custom fit to the device by the manufacturer helps a lot.

    However, I don't see any mention of any Desktop Linux breakthroughs. Why? As far as I can tell there are two general types of computer users: those who want the computer to set itself up as much as possible and those who want total control over their computer and don't mind learning more than they ever set out to know about their computer.

    If a decent Desktop Linux Distro ever comes out that is loved by the first group I can see the second group griping about how much it takes control away from the user. But wouldn't taking control away from the user be the goal of such a distro?

    But that's what I think. I could be wrong.
    • But wouldn't taking control away from the user be the goal of such a distro?

      Maybe, maybe not. I'm reminded of an observation I've read about the early days of unix. At the time (early 70's), it was common practice in the computer biz to have special-purpose install/config tools for every package, and their data was usually in a secret binary format. Every package had its own install/config tool, and if anything went wrong, you often couldn't fix it (because the config tool died while reading the files).
      • I agree with you that having plain-text config files and user-friendly front-ends is a great way to go. However, some front-end configuration programs sometimes fall short of enough control over the config files. Also, sometimes when a config file is edited directly the user-friendly config program will get cranky.

        Kppp is one front-end that I wish the developers spend a little more time on. It took a long time for me to track down that I needed pppd to get the "noauth" setting set and Kppp was not allowed
    • If a decent Desktop Linux Distro ever comes out that is loved by the first group I can see the second group griping about how much it takes control away from the user.

      I'm not sure the two are mutually exclusive. There have been several times where I WISHED something would just "work" without having to dork with dependencies, the odd compilation error, or somesuch. Even so, just because you have a layer that provides all the sugar coating, it's just that - sugar coating. As long as I as scrape as little or

  • Couldn't resist... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mastropiero ( 258677 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:16PM (#8917872) Journal
    This [despair.com] came to my head instantly...

    Don't get me wrong, I like the penguins... it's just funny... Oh well, there goes my karma....
  • who phoned and asked Bay Star to invest in SCO, Bay Stars is reported as saying. So, the journalists reports that this isn't a 'smoking gun'. My question is, "What is the journalist smoking?"

    Plausible deniability? He want us to believe that who ever it was at Microsoft who did phone Bay Star and ask them to fund SCO were never told by Balmer or Gates to do it? They just thought it was a whippy idea and took it upon themselves to make the call?

    Ya. Right. Al Capone never bribed any cops, either.

  • Novell Reborn (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (dlonrasg)> on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:47PM (#8918316) Homepage Journal

    I just want to throw in my 2 cents and say that the Linux deals Novell has made in the past year are real head-slappers.

    You know, "Dang! why didn't I think of that?"

    For years, Novell has been looking at the Windows as an internet application server platform and for a while, they wanted Netware to compete. Finally, they found a way to make it happen - big time. They also bring to Linux all their years of experience with Netware, Groupwise and file and user security and directory services, so I even expect other projects like Samba and Filesystem ACLs [bestbits.at] will benefit too.

    Dust off the red markers, boys, the 'N' is back in town.
  • Novell didn't need Linux to survive. The fact is that Novell could survive for 3 years on their cash reserves if they stopped selling products & services.

    -Nick
  • Sure, I've used UNIX/Linux and they have many good attributes. But stories like this are, well, kinda dumb. Does it really matter if the Linux *kernel* ends up in a phone or a cash register? Really, we're just talking about the kernel here, not a window manager, not a desktop, not applications. There are dozens of realtime OSes out there to choose from, and from a consumer's point of view it's irrelevant. (And most techies can't even name any operating systems designed for embedded use.)

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