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Linux Business IBM

IBM Puts $100M Behind Linux Push 302

Posted by Zonk from the big-blue-penguin dept.
IainMH writes "Over at the BBC, there is a report that despite the slow build up, IBM is spending $100m (£52m) over the next three years beefing up its commitment to Linux software. It continues: 'The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.'" Commentary and coverage also available on TechNewsWorld and ZDNet.
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IBM Puts $100M Behind Linux Push More

IBM Puts $100M Behind Linux Push

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  • They need cash ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:21AM (#11712766)
    ... to run linux!??!

    Say wah!?!?!?

  • A BIG ally like IBM... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrollBridge ( 550878 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:22AM (#11712769) Homepage Journal
    Might be just what it takes to get a large chunk of hardware manufacturers and software vendors to start offering Linux-friendly products.

    Sure, it might not start out as Linux-friendly games and gaming hardware, but this could be a very good start.

    I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.
    • "I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back."


      Yea, that seems very realistic. A giant company increasing spending because of a moral committment.

      Can I score some of what you are high on?

      • For a bunch of principled Linux fanbois, you're really offputting because you don't even know how much IBM already gives back to the community. You just want to rail on about how information wants to be free, The Man is keeping everything down, etc. Hey, wake up. Linux is in the enterprise. Linux is making people money, and people are contributing back into Linux. The money people are making is largely coming from services provided, which is the model that the FOSS people want... free software, open so

        • Re:A BIG ally like IBM... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DoctorMO ( 720244 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:38AM (#11712971)
          I kind of like IBM making money out of Linux, it means they have a stake in what happens to it and will more than likly contribute to it's growth and development. since Linux will remain open source it's really both of us that benifit, the company makes money and Linux gets some of the holes filled in with great wads of cash.
    • I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

      Umm, they are putting 100M into linux software? I think they are expecting "the getting something back" part of the deal.

    • > I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

      They won't make money (or recover those $100 m) out of vacuum - most likely you'll pay an extra X bucks for something from IBM along the way.

      Talk about free lunch....

      Look at their share price, for Christ's - do they look like some poor bastards who give everything away and survive on bare essentials? I don't think so.

      Do you think their CEO said "Let's burn $100m and we'll get some

      • Re:A BIG ally like IBM... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Trigun ( 685027 ) <evil&evilempire,ath,cx> on Friday February 18, 2005 @12:13PM (#11713418)
        Give them the razor, sell them the blades comes to mind (and is a good source for a pun). If IBM kicks its fabs into full production, starts putting their power chips into millions of devices, and really nails the world on the whole 'digital convergence' crap, Microsoft's $2000 Tivo will be nothing.

        How far could you push a generic box? Linux is a router, is a tivo, is a phone system, is a PC, is a whatever you dream up. Sell a platform for it, do what Dodge did with the K-car, and sit back and count the cash.

        Maybe that's why they teamed up with Sony for the PS3? /random speculation

      • Look at their share price, for Christ's - do they look like some poor bastards who give everything away and survive on bare essentials?

        One word: Services.

        Linux becoming successful will mean that software services will be open to any and all comers, with no particular company gaining an advantage due to in-house knowledge of proprietary trade secrets, etc.

        The advantage then goes to the company that has built trust with its clients, has a deep broad bench of intelligent staff as talent. Example: IBM.

        Bus

    • Re:A BIG ally like IBM... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:45AM (#11713063) Homepage
      I also hope that, when IBM starts making money with Linux, that some moral compass directs them to give something back.

      I think you're missing the point. They don't need to have a "moral compass" directing them to give something back. IBM and Novell are both betting their business plans on the success of Linux, so the desire to make their business succeed and the desire to profit will direct them to use their time/money/resources to make Linux a success.

      Or, more properly speaking, we should not be using the future tense. IBM and Novell are making money with Linux, and they have been "giving back". The good news is not "IBM is being nice and making a large charitable contribution towards Linux development". The story here is, "IBM views Linux as a necessary component for their success, and they are [currently] putting a lot of resources into helping Linux grow."

      • The parent post is absolutely correct. IBM is giving back now by investing in Linux. The other, less obvious, contribution is that by actually recognizing the market for Linux and investing in it, IBM is expanding that market, which is expanding the total # of individuals who use and can in turn contribute back to Linux and it's related apps.
  • And develop an easy-install linux that works on virtually every big-vendor box with a good GUI. Something like OSX but free and for that weird instruction set everyone else uses. *flamebait, kill my karma*

    • Re:Put your money where your mouth is... (Score:5, Funny)

      by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:33AM (#11712921)
      ...and while you're at it, I'd also like a pony.
    • Forget the graphic part - the whole UI needs work. Package management is balkanized and bad in general, KDE/Gnome are becoming so heavy that you need a P4 just to run them, 'etc. You want to know the best way to use this money? Forget about handhelds and embedded systems - drop the whole $100 million into developing a good UI for desktop users.
      • Your right that KDE/Gnome are becoming too heavy, they have big problems when it comes to modularity and I'm sure there working to redress them.

        There are also problems with the lack of development on Xfree which is only now being addressed by xorg, but that will take time to get to anything like Mac/NextStep/Cocca

        There are problems with hardware information standards, i.e there are none, it's all higled pigldy even if a module exists in the kernel for my dodar the connection between device information, ha

        • There are also problems with the lack of development on Xfree which is only now being addressed by xorg, but that will take time to get to anything like Mac/NextStep/Cocca

          GNUstep [gnustep.org], and we already have (thanks to using X) a client-server mechanism; something lacking in Aqua and badly implemented in NeXTSTEP. What's needed is for GNUstep to become easier to deploy and get more apps available - unfortunately because KDE and GNOME are already out there people are using them as the 'good enough' alternative.

      • i cant speak for gnome, but kde runs just fine (about the same as windows 98, faster than xp) on a Pentium-MMX 233mhz, with most of the fancy things turned off. This was on slackware 10 on my gf's PC.
      • I believe the next Windows release will be quite heavy too, KDE and Gnome increase gradually in complexity. Windows "improvements" come in large chunks.

        There has been talk of the next version of Windows requiring certain 3D features on the video card, basically to allow for a more appealing display.

      • Kde P4? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nurb432 ( 527695 )
        Im sure many wont agree.

        I have an older PIII 700, 256MB ram.. Running BSD + kde 3.3

        Works fine.. XP would be dismal on the same hardware.

        • Re:Kde P4? (Score:2, Informative)

          by dokebi ( 624663 )
          I have an even older PII 266 running on 192MB of RAM. KDE is really slow. So is Gnome. On Slackware. Fedora or Suse is impossible. Windows 2000, however, runs acceptably well so I use that. It even gets security updates (for now).

          It used to be that linux was great running on old hardware. But now they are not. What is my alternative besides Windows 2000?

      • Re:Put your money where your mouth is... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rpdillon ( 715137 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @12:26PM (#11713604) Homepage
        For one, package management varies 180 degrees from distro to distro.

        I actually like a lot of distros from a design perspective, but I simply cannot stand RPM as a package managemrent system. This could well be because I am not doing this "correctly", but even with yum, I feel like the entire package design was never meant for a centralized, automated repository, and it breaks my heart that so many great distros use it (SuSe is one I love except for RPM).

        Enter debian, which changed my Linux world as far as package management. It is head and shoulders above the RPM distros. I abandoned it because of the complexity of maintaining a cutting edge desktop that was reasonably stable. I found that upgrading a single package would sometimes bring down the house of cards of my carefully balanced dependencies between testing and unstable. Meh.

        So, here I am, another Slashbot Gentoo fanboi. I run Gentoo on all my home computers (MythTV AMD Athlon XP box, AMD 64 desktop and Centrino laptop) and couldn't be more satisfied. It is package management nirvana...even major upgrades for for KDE, xorg-x11 or compiler upgrades go fairly smoothly. My only real gripe is that sometimes people post ebiuld that haven't been tested, so things can break "for no reason" and you have to go read around the forums to see if it's you, or something in the ebuild repository. I really don't mind waiting a couple of minutes for most compiles. Even kde-base and xorg-x11 are OK, I just leave them overnight. Besides, if you need to get up an moving in a hurry, just use the reference platform to get running, and compile in the background.

        My point is that railing on "Linux package mangement" is a bit broad...I haven't even addressed Slackware packages because I don't know how they work (it's the only major distro that I've never used). And I'll tell you what: all of them are light years ahead of Windows.

        Oh, BTW, I ran KDE on a PII 400 with no problems. And that was the MORE bulky KDE 2. KDE 3 is actually lighter as far as runtime resources. Linux is all about customization...you just have to know where to trim the fat. =)
        • I feel the same way in all respects. I used Redhat for a long time, and then Mandrake. I tried Debian, too, but didn't find it to be much different then an RPM based system.

          I checked out Gentoo, and I was hooked. While I don't like the compile times, it's normally a non-issue when you're running on a fairly recent platform. The only parts that take a long time to compile are KDE, X, and GCC - none of which require to be upgraded very often. It's so easy to install new software and manage installed
        • Gentoo and Debian are centrally-manged free software projects. This means they can control all of the packages themselves, which does result in better integration, quality, etc.

          RPMs are not centrally managed. There are the main YUM repositories (which work nearly as well as the debian and gentoo repositories) but you can also download RPMs from many third parties.

          When was the last time you saw a third party offer a .deb which wasn't in the Debian repository? Do ATI or NVidia offer kernel packages for Debi
        • The problem (Inasmuch as Debian has a problem) is that corporations can't just run apt-get off Debian's site every night or so. They want to test the updated packages against their builds and make sure that nothing breaks all the desktop users at once.

          Now this isn't so much of a problem when you think about it. Just set up all your systems to point at IT's dist servers instead of Debian's. Not a big deal really, but I haven't seen a process for it. Automated update is just something corporations don't typ

      • I see this comment allot and I don't understand it. I have Mandrake 10.1 running on a K6-266 with 256 megs of ram, 60 gig HD, and a full KDE and Gnome install. It runs fine! quite zippy actually.
    • mmm an easy to install Linux and a decent GUI.

      Heres a point we as a community could learn from microsoft.

      Think about the Windows 9x/XP installation process.

      Step 1: Put cd in, start computer

      Step 2: Read welcome screen, hit 'agree'

      Step 3: Wait, reboot machine

      Step 4: Create user, and BAM your done.

      Seriously, the common person really doesnt give two craps about Partitions, package installation, what a 'resoultion' or 'bit depth' is, or any of the normal basic *nix installation process we are all familar

      • Everything works just like you say it should.

        And "auntie jenna" will never install an OS on her computer. She will use whatever came with it when she bought it or whatever someone sets up on it.
        • Forget Ubuntu if you like KDE, it's not strictly supported.

          It does appear to be a nice distro for Gnome lovers. I prefer a more neutral distro.
      • Those instructions *mostly* work if you have hardware that was extremely common when the OS was first distributed. However, it's not at all uncommon to have to search for the disks that came with your hardware or hunt down the drivers on the internet. Every machine I have, Windows fails to detect at least 1 thing.

        Now, compare that to a Fedora Core 3 installation. The Fedora installation is just as easy (I think easier), but, in many cases, it will actually find your hardware without any driver hunting.

      • Step 4: Create user, and BAM your done.

        You just described essentially the SuSE setup process.

        However on Windows you need:

        Step 5: Install virus scanner
        Step 6: Install Office
        Step 7: Install Instant Messenger
        Step 8: Install Firefox (you don't want to keep that IE-junk, do you?)
        Step 9: Install drivers
        .
        .
        .
        .

      • The Windows XP installation craps out on my room mate's computer every single time UNLESS the second CD drive's in the "Ejected" state (With its platter sticking out and waiting for a CD.)

        Won't go in to how long it took me to figure THAT one out.

    • Why do they need to do that when there already are easy-to-install distros that work with most common hardware? Fedora/Redhat, Mandrake, and Novell are probably the major ones, all easy to install, and all of them, if you stick the CD in a given Dell or HP or whatever, there's a good chance everything will work.

      You mention OSX, but the reason OSX doesn't ever lack hardware support is that Apple controls the hardware. How is IBM going to control the hardware that Dell and HP use?

      Plus, IBM has said they d

    • Another suggestion for IBM: I just went to ibm.com, clicked on the "Shop for ... Notebooks" link, and looked around a bit. I was unable to find any notebook that included linux as an alternative OS. If it's there, it's very well hidden.

      There was also no hint of AIX or any other unix-like system. The only OS choices were Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition and Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional.

      This doesn't exactly give me a good feeling that they want to sell to us linux geeks.

      OT

  • Start at home! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tmasssey ( 546878 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:22AM (#11712781) Homepage Journal
    I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation [lotus.com] still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...

    Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!

    • What about this...

      http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/pr ec onfig.jsp?id=2005-02-17+08%3A29%3A22.845191R&S_TAC T=104CBW71&S_CMP=&s=
    • I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation still doesn't have a Linux client. And the server still lags behind Windows and AIX for feature-completeness...

      Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!

      Kind of like Sony making mp3 devices and suing people for copyright infringement ...

      I tried to run Domino 6 on a Linux server and ran into a few snags. I find it really frustrating that they don't make all their servers equal.

      Another thin
      • IBM already does have "Linux and Domino on a CD"--for IBM sales people.

        However, I'm told that IBM absolutely will not be distributing Linux to customers, for legal reasons. (And no, I don't know what those reasons are.)

        SuSE have a Domino pack that configures the system for optimum Domino performance. Once you do that, setting up Domino is as easy as on any other platform.
    • Except Lotus isn't nearly as important for IBM's long-term strategic goals as Linux is. IBM's big cash cows are hardware (big iron) and services (not software, but setting up software, building custom apps, etc). Truth is, it might be just as good or better for IBM to have a FOSS groupware package that they can be paid to set up and configure on their systems than to actually sell the software.

      In fact, I wouldn't be totally surprised if in 5 years, IBM isn't really selling Lotus anymore, but pushes some

    • Re:Start at home! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by enoyls ( 729779 )
      I believe that is where a large portion of the $100,000,000 will be spent. You have to read between the lines a little, but it's alluded to in CNet's coverage. http://news.com.com/IBM+plays+up+Workplace+suite/2 110-1012_3-5548304.html?tag=nl/ [com.com] http://news.com.com/IBM+to+invest+100+million+in+L inux+push/2100-1012_3-5580976.html?tag=nefd.top/ [com.com] Sooner or later IBM is going to bite the bullet and move its 300,000 employees to Linux, and at that time they had better have a better solution than using wine. Wor
    • I love it: IBM's putting $100 Million into Linux software, and their premier desktop groupware appliacation [Lotus Notes] still doesn't have a Linux client.

      To which I say - hooray!

      It's awful, and while I don't actually use it myself, I pity those who do... ;-)

  • IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stanistani ( 808333 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:22AM (#11712786) Homepage Journal
    Why do I get the feeling that in five years you will ask the man-in-the-street what Linux is and they will reply, "That's that IBM stuff, right? Runs on all the 'puters!"
    • If this is anything like the last campaign, the man in the street will point down and say "Linux! They're the idiots who spray painted these penguins on my sidewalk!"
    • Linux bashing on Slashdot? ... Hehe. That'll be funny :)

    • Re:IBM you BM we all BM for IBM - David Gerrold (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @01:40PM (#11714848) Homepage Journal
      ... in five years you will ask the man-in-the-street what Linux is and they will reply, "That's that IBM stuff, right?

      Heh. We're getting there fast. I recently came off a several-year project to wean a big corporation (who shall remain nameless here to protect the clueless ;-) of their big IBM mainframes and move most of their stuff onto a flock of linux (RedHat) servers scattered around the Net. One problem the sales guys had to deal with was convincing their upper management to sign off on what they hadn't ever heard of and which they considered fly-by-night stuff.

      The approach that worked was to show them some of IBM's web sites, and say "See? Linux is an IBM product."

      Now, most readers here will probably think this is a joke. While I agree it's tremendously funny; fact is that it worked. They didn't see through the rather ambiguous wording at all. To their fuzzy minds, linux is indeed an IBM product, since IBM sells it.

      Actually, the techies at the big corp also thought this was really funny. Most of them have either linux or OSX (or both) on their personal machines. And when I set up demos of our stuff via web sites, they knew exactly what to do with them. In fact, they mostly lost interest in the GUI stuff we were developing, and only wanted to talk about the Web interface, which became a significant part of my job.

      But there is a widespread attitude among management that "computer" and "IBM machine" are synonyms. If it doesn't come from IBM, it's not a computer. And Microsoft is a division of IBM, of course.

      We've had this attitude in the business community for over 40 years now, and we're probably not going to change it. The best approach probably is to get the message out that "Linux is an IBM product". This is all that most managers will want to see, and they don't want to hear any discussion of the details. Details are for underlings.

      We'll know we've won when we start hearing the media talk about linux as an "IBM product". Most of the media consists of people who also think that IBM is the only real computer company, Microsoft makes IBM software, and all those other companies are insignificant.

      We can probably also add to the confusion by pointing out that IBM has always supported free software. They sell computers; those computers come with all that software at no extra charge; this has been true since the 1950's. That'll be convincing. Details like "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" is way over their pretty talking heads (though some of them will understand "free as in disk space" ;-).

      Outside the geek community, fuzzy thinking and fuzzy speech is the norm.

  • I'm in. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:23AM (#11712796)
    The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.

    I pledge to install Linux on at least one PC, one laptop, and one handheld. How much of the $100M do I get?

  • Dr. Evil says (Score:4, Funny)

    by passion ( 84900 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:23AM (#11712797)
    one-hundred-meeelion-dollars!

  • desktop Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mantorp ( 142371 ) <mantorp 'funny A' gmail.com> on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:25AM (#11712818) Homepage Journal
    The cash injection will be used to help its customers use Linux on every type of device from handheld computers and phones right up to powerful servers.

    I know it fits inbetween handhelds and servers somewhere, but it seems there's more Linux growth on those two ends (handhelds and servers) than in the middle, on desktops of Joe user.

  • IBM Linux Push Haiku (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward


    IBM spends dough.
    Pushing Linux for all apps.
    Why do they hate Bill?

  • The desktop (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:27AM (#11712840)
    Let IBM slap any flavor of Linux on the desktop or pay some group to do it. Then I will really be happy with them. I know that my wishes do not determine IBM's strategy whatsoever, but this does not prevent me from wishing.

    Right now Ubuntu looks OK for the Gnomers and XandrOS is just fine for the KDErs [IMHO]. The most important thing here is to have a desktop that works out-of-the-box.

  • Businesses and Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oprahwinfree ( 466659 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:28AM (#11712851) Homepage
    With companies like IBM putting a lot of effort into pushing Linux, it may make businesses that are reluctant to adopt an OS that has a perceived lack of support behind it more willing to try it out.

    This is good news and certainly a major push for Linux.

  • OS/2 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sporty ( 27564 )
    Did IBM put this much into OS/2? Man I loved that os...

  • IBM is on the right track. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Workplace is a suite of programs and tools that allow workers to get at core business applications no matter what device they use to connect to corporate networks. One of the main focuses of the initiative will be to make it easier to use Linux-based desktop computers and mobile devices with Workplace."

    Clearly IBM sees how usefull small portable devices can be and their future in the work place. This is great for serious developers of small proprietary aps for hand-helds.

    If you consider the fact that by

  • Shouldn't customers be paying IBM for help?

  • Not your desktop, you dolts. The servers. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:38AM (#11712974) Homepage Journal
    Clearly this is almost entirely focused on the server side aka Workplace which is a huge complex assembly of AIX, Linux, Python, Java and RDBMSs. This is aimed at business space that wants to use Linux for things like CRM, Peoplesoft, SAP, Oracle, Seibel and custom made apps.

  • Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billy the Mountain ( 225541 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:45AM (#11713056) Journal
    This might seem obvious, but having IBM endorse Linux (by money infusions and advertising) really helps the OS community spread the software into mainstream business. My supervisor is so old-school and tends to favor MS products, but with this kind of support from IBM, I can now at least get a couple of Linux servers up and running without complaints and my supervisor can see the reliability that exceeds Windows in these instances first-hand.

    BTM

  • I thought linux was free... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GatesGhost ( 850912 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:45AM (#11713062)
    they'll just end up having one guy go around installing red hat all day and blow the rest of the money on coke and whores.
  • I think whoever said that IBM was selling their PC division as a way to combat their vulnerability to Microsoft was correct. Otherwise, this sort of activity would leave them rather vulnerable.

  • IBM are the do-everything company (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superskippy ( 772852 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:48AM (#11713099)

    The thing to remember about IBM is that the are the do-everything company. Where Sun, or Microsoft, or Apple etc. try and sell you one vision of the future, IBM invest in everything, and let you decide what you want.

    Want to run Linux sir? No problem! Or Windows? No problem too. Proprietary UNIX? We've got it. Have we got some bizarre other operating systems? Have we ever!

    We'll sell you an Intel server, a RISC based unix server, an AMD server, any bizarre server you like. Stuck in the 80s and can't decide whether you want fat clients or thin clients and a mainframe? No problem, we've got mainframes, we've got PCs (until recently, of course).

    My point is that IBM may be investing $100m in Linux, but chances are, they are also investing $100m in everything else too. That's the IBM way- because they never stick all of their chips on one technology, they never win big (like Wintel has done), but they never lose their shirts either (like Sun looks like doing, and HP looks like doing with Itanic)

    • They stuck all of their chips in mainframes, won big, lost big, and are now winning big again. But you're right, the bets are hedged now.

      Keeping alive legacy products is a great way to keep your customers, rather than telling them to go to hell. Anyone who bet their company on Itanium-- to hell with support for legacy hardware-- is now doing some serious, belated backtracking and firing of CEOs and whatnot.

  • Desktop? Are you mad??? (Score:3)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:52AM (#11713143) Homepage Journal
    There are people here who still have emotional scars from OS/2. Trust me, IBM will never ever ever ever try to take the lead in end user desktop OS's ever again. They may very well follow others into the Linux desktop world but they will never ever ever butt heads with MS again for out-front dominance.

    And if they wanted to, then they should just buy any all of the following:

    Xandros
    Lycoris
    ELX

    Which are built as commerical Linux replacements of Windows desktops and not for the Krispy Kreme & Black T-shirts crowd.

  • Watched the flash demo of IBM Workspace (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:56AM (#11713183) Journal
    From what I've read it seems that IBM is going to commit to making sure that there is a LINUX (Mac too?) client for IBM workspace.

    I watched the demo and it looks interesting enough. The question is, do you trust IBM not to lock you into their "all encompassing" back-office infrastructure with no-interoperability? Or Do you just want to swallow the pill and drink MS's cool aid?

    What I would like to see is some sort of reasonably easy to program middleware that is cross-platform (XUL for example) to take the place of platform specific proprietary clients. This way the user's PC is not weighed down.

    I suppose some people might point out that you can already kind of do this with X terminals, but it seems that using the browser as the way to do everything, either through XUL or HTML/J2EE..ect is the direction people WANT to move in.

  • IBM and Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _LORAX_ ( 4790 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:57AM (#11713189) Homepage
    Let me just say that I run Linux on IBM hardware and for the most part it's ok. The hardware is managed to within an inch of it's life and there are a number of propriatary componients to this hardware that just down not play well with "FLOSS" deployments. Ie keeping up to date often means loosing propriatary functionality or control for a while.

    I see they are finally making progress on integrating more of the hardware into the software ( IE partitioning is kindof working ). But for the most part I spend 3x the time managing the IBM hardware then real commodity hardware like dell's. With commodity hardware I can find better documentation, better written toolchains ( free toolclains that can be altered ). With IBM's I have to reverse engeneer how the software works just to figure out why it stoped working.

    Overall it's just an odd fit. IBM is trying to commodidize the OS so they don't have to worry about it, but the problem with that is it leads to the result that commodity hardware is better supported, not what IBM is selling! So the more they push Linux the more we are moving away from IBM hardware and moving to true commodity hardware like Dell's ( at less than half the price per CPU ). IBM hardware may be reliable, but st some point it's just not worth 2x or more of the price.
    • That's actually opposite of what we're doing. Because of IBM Linux support, we buy pretty much nothing but IBM hardware. And it all runs Linux save 3 MS Sql servers for Navision and our pSeries boxes (p520 and dual-CEC p570).

      IBM hardware works very well with Linux except for the occasional ASM driver screw up but it doesn't take the whole box down.

      There WAS that write-through cache mode bug on our EXP400 but we fixed that pretty quickly.
    • I can see what you are saying, but I guess you know why?

      Here is the IBM stack.

      1. IBM hardware.
      2. Linux/AIX OS
      3. Java VM
      5. Enterprise Application Platform + dev tools
      6. Custom Development and Consultancy.

      Only steps 5 and 6 make IBM money.
      IBM wants hardware to be cheap and plentiful and run Linux but mainly stable enterprise versions like redhat that can be certified.
      IBM wants java to be succesful and open and free.
      IBM wants the world to use it's development tools and kit so it makes lot's of them free lik
  • IBM committed to spend one billion dollars on Linux [ad-mkt-review.com] in 2002. If they spent all that already, this new $100 million should last what, about four months?
  • If you want to do something useful for Linux...

    ...Then port it to the Cell processor ASAP.

  • ...new life, in fact, to... ...IBM-compatible.
  • I haven't checked the reports, and done the math, but this strikes me as a small committment on the scales of comapny we're talking about; along the lines of the % of Gate's wealth that goes to charity (although I'm sure it's not that small; and even that he gets to write off, for giving windows licenses to schools to further hedge his empire; I guess in absolute terms, no one can knock his contributions to world causes, but I'd like to think if I had billions, I'd give half or most of it to good causes, ho
  • $33M a year may seem like a lot, but compared to what Apple and Microsoft spend on OS R&D (both OS X and Windows have had billions poured into them to date) it's peanuts. Now IBM won't have to fund development of the entire OS, but if they're aiming to develop a Linux that can compete on the desktop, they've got their work cut out for them.
  • If anyone can be bothered to RTFA, you will find this is simply IBM playing with smoke and mirrors again...

    Classic example from TFA:

    "will add Linux-based elements to IBM's Workplace software."

    It's just a big advert for yet another proprietary IBM product with some good old Linux magic pixie dust sprinkled over it.

    Looks like they're already getting good value for their $100m worth of *advertising*... Gushing enthusiasm from the BBC is worth its weight in gold ;-)

    Those of us *actually* promoting pure Ope

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