Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Linux Software

Kenwood Chooses Linux Over NT for ERP 132

Posted by Nathan from the Bass-Reflex dept.
Structured Audio writes "Kenwood America (the speaker maker) has moved from Pick to Linux for its enterprise resource planning apps. This Techweb article explains why Kenwood chose Linux over NT or a commercial Unix." ERP and financials are among the most important areas for Linux and open source to shine if they are to be accepted by the corporate world.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Kenwood Chooses Linux Over NT for ERP More

Kenwood Chooses Linux Over NT for ERP

Comments Filter:
  • Let's hope so. *But* an MCSE friend and I installed W2K Advanced Server and it is very impressive - nothing like a warmed over NT4SP6.

    And no, a traceroute to my ip does not end in Redmond ;-)

  • The whole thing about 6-8 hours for w aindows box and vitrualy instant for Linux...

    That was comparing their legacy mini to a Linux server, both doing data import/export to Windows boxen.

    The 2-four processor thing is actually QUITE believable.

  • Kenwood is hardly a loser company. Its product line includes a complete line of communications for industrial applications, which is a very profitable market. Considering their quality over the latest Motorola products that I have to use, Kenwood looks very promising. I work in an industrial environment which requires that can deliver a clear voice. Its not much to ask, but the $450 radios from their competitor are a pain to hear.

  • Linux ERP links (Score:3)

    by cybaea ( 79975 ) <(moc.aeabyc) (ta) (enalla)> on Saturday November 20, 1999 @10:05AM (#1516311) Homepage Journal

    Some links to ERP vendors and what they have to say about Linux support:

    • SAP [sap.com] has announced Linux support and has been shipping since August 25. Their Linux page is here [sap.com].
      (Check out the cool penguin :-))
    • Baan [baan.com] does not seem to have any public plans for Linux support. (Their web site does not have a search facility so it's hard to be sure, but they seem to be a Microsoft shop.) Does anybody know differently?
    • J. D. Edwards [jdedwards.com] has a very frustrating site which will lead you to a search page [jdedwards.com] which promises that "to find what J.D.Edwards position is on the Linux operating system, type Linux in the field below and click Search". When I did this I got "no matching documents", so I assume they don't have a position.
    • PeopleSoft [peoplesoft.com] does not mention Linux on their site, so it is probably safe to assume that they do not support it.

    So, answering my previous question [slashdot.org], it seems like Kenwood is limited to choose between SAP and SAP.

  • "We're not on Linux because we're gung ho for it or because we're revolutionaries," said Gary Calvin, systems integration specialist at Kenwood. "We chose it because it suits our business."

    Exactly the right attitude - can World Domination (TM) be far behind? :-)

  • The J.D.Edwards page had me ROTFL - did you email them about this? I think everyone who tries it should send them a note...

  • 100% agreed. I switched to Linux two years ago for the same reason: more value (in my case, more programming flexibility, less system crashes/screwups) for less money. There's no fun in beating M$ and feeling victorious about it. After all, I'm sure many M$ people feel the same way when they finally managed to embrace-extend-exterminate a threatening competitor. But when what you produce gives you more value at lower costs, wOw! Now, that's worth struggling for. :-)

  • If it's good for the losers, why shouldn't it be good for the winners? Maybe it's better to have failing companies switch over to Linux and then come out better because of it.

    Exactly. Maybe having "losing" companies embrace Linux is the best thing. If companies are using NT and sinking, and then they convert to Linux and become successful, then maybe other companies won't wait for NT to sink them :)

    -Brent
    --

  • Oops, I forgot

    • Oracle [oracle.com] supports Linux [oracle.com] for their basic database and application servers. I don't use the Oracle ERP products so I'm not sure, but they do not seem to be supported.
  • Another variation of the x company adopts Linux theme. Is anyone else bored by this?

    Probably not. No one is *forcing* you to read it either. I wouldn't be posting this if I wasn't interested. If it bores you, when you see it on the front page, sigh, and move on to the next story.

    Linux has passed the novelty phase.

    Stories like this are like awards. Linux is a real player now. Some people want to hear about companies using it.

    The folks at Microsoft must laugh when they read stuff like this.

    I am afraid that you'll have to explain this one. Microsoft laughing because they lost business? Because Linux is overtaking NT? I think that Microsoft would be desperate to cover up all stories about companies deploying Linux.

    Oh, you seem to want to cover up all stories about companies deploying Linux. Maybe that explains it. Are you Microsoft?

    -Brent
    --
  • I have a kenwood cd player. It's tons better than any sony discman out and was actually cheaper and better looking. I hope they really improve Linux.

  • Linux also was a better choice over Windows NT because Linux requires less-powerful hardware than Windows NT to do the same job...

    A Windows machine with similar functionality would probably need to be at least a four-processor system...

    Well said! Now if only a few tens of thousands of other companies would adopt the same attitude, then perhaps we could finally get rid of bloatware.

    (And it isn't just Microsoft who are guilty, though they seem to have written bloat into their business model.)

  • I just want to say how glad I am to see this happen right after the Mindcraft "vindication." It really does seem like a lot of companies are just ignoring a most of the FUD and making decisions based on real-world technical merit. "And there was much rejoicing ...."

  • What ERP packages support Linux?

    I'm answering one of my own questions in another thread [slashdot.org].

    How about the other question: is choosing Linux and be dammned as far as the applications are concerned the start of a trend? Does anybody have any (other) examples of this happening in "real life"?

  • In this case it's understandable - Pick is something of a mixture of an operating system, database, and programming environment. Pick is the computing equivalent of horseshoe crabs - it ought to have been made extinct ages ago, but somehow keeps plodding along just as it always has. Nice to see somebody completely bypassing the Microsoft Era, though.
  • I wonder what their relationship is to the Kenwood that makes ham radios.

    They are the same company. The radio stuff is at www.kenwood.net [kenwood.net]

  • Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Add Bill Gates, and you've got the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
  • I have a kenwood cd player. It's tons better than any sony discman out and was actually cheaper and better looking. I hope they really improve Linux.

    Ummm... Kenwood is using linux, not programming for it. As in they could have bought NT and used it.

    ERP doesn't make products better, nor does the OS a company uses to run on make products better. Proper design and engineering make products better. Proper marketting makes you want one more than the others. The OS is irrelavent to the product in this case.

  • Wow. Seems like, regardless whether there was any truth behind the Mindcraft "vindication" (and IMNSHO it is valid, much as I personally wish it wasn't), Linux still wins in more typical situations than Mindcraft used in their tests.

    Exactly. In that exact situation NT won... But as it's been argued over and over and over on /., how many companies use a single server with four processors and four 100bT network cards to serve up web pages and handle domain users? I'm willing to wager a big fat zero. So way to go Microsoft! You've won in a completely irrelavent battle! Wowwwwwwwwww-eeee! You chose poorly-supported hardware for Linux and threw our best guys at it... of course it's gonna not do as well... But I digress...
  • Back in January, a /. story lead me to this article [bnl.gov] containing a prize anecdote:

    Those well worn issues of how one make money with open source technology were batted back and forth and Richard always won the argument. Gerry, IBI's CEO, said at one point that SAP, the second largest software company in the world, does not give away its software for free, and it never will. SAP customers pay lots of money to buy their software and don't want it to be free. Richard responds by saying that he is going to write a GPL'ed version of the software SAP sells. It will take time, but there will be a freely, source code distributeable version available sometime in the future. How can you argue with that.

    When I read that, I wanted to kiss his pate and laugh. At the time, I was one of three in our company charged with finding an ERP package to replace all our RS/400 OLTP and PC business intelligence applications. It would then fall to me to implement these changes company wide in 90 days. We were left with choosing between the lesser of five evils. Why? Our budget required that the software licenses be within US$200,000 per 30 users. Final cost for the project worked out to US$417,000 per 30 users.

    My response in the thread was essentially "FreeSAP: Now that's the work of a patriot! Is this a declared project? Where do I sign up and what can I contribute (equipment, money, industrial eng research, code, APICS pulp, blood)?" ;)

    In reply, AC summed-up the problem:
    I found his comments about writing GPL'd SAP clone software to be hilarious. He can't be serious. Just who does he think is going to write all that code? I mean, the free software community considers the Linux kernel and Mozilla to be "large" projects, both of which are trivial compared to writing software to compete with SAP from scratch. He would have to mobilize an army of free software developers, most of which would have no personal interest in or use for the kind of software SAP sells.
    A clarification [bnl.gov] was submitted by RMS.

    My point in this is to reaffirm that no Open Source software venue, aside from the NOS, could be of greater benefit than OS ERP applications. In the original 'Request for Comment and Quote' to ERP vendors, I listed 300+ functions that were essential to our business. The winning package checked-off all but two. In fact, only about seventy of those functions are handled meaning I had to write separate applications and find little better than compromises. In so many cases the goal could be met with a SQL trigger but all the application logic is in the client app!

    Frankly, I'm awfully tired. I know that closed-source ERP applications have cost many others as dearly; I believe that hurts our economy broadly.
  • So, I wonder, is DNS and e-mail the ultimate "killer apps" for Linux that will finally propel it into the IT departments across United States and the rest of the world?
    I can't imagine why that would be the case. DNS and mail would have to run especially excellently on Linuxes, better than these would run on any other operating systems. This is certainly not the case, at least when you consider the other Unixes. Linuxes provide no particular advantage for those purposes over other Unixes, save perhaps for price, and even that matter evaporates when you consider that there are other free Unixes around, too. There are other Unixes with commercial support, too, just there are Linuxes with the same.

    The ISPs I know all use some BSD flavor for their mail and DNS services. I just can't imagine some Linux flavor ever standing head and shoulders above all other contenders in this area.

    (Maybe someday I'll figure out what this funny "IT" thing means. I think it's what we used to call what the mindless data-processing drones did, and whom we all despised. It's certainly no more related to computer science than my cat is. Sounds like some kind of business degree, or sentence.)

  • In this context, I believe they will be porting their ERP application to jBase, not looking for ERP software packages, and the system they are talking about is the hardware. Typically, legacy Pick applications either port to a modern Pick lookalike shell running on Unix or NT (jBase is one of these), or switch to a completely new application outside the Pick marketplace. The fact that they are sticking with Pick (jBase) indicates they have chosen the former path.
  • IBM to role out Win2k Company Wide From the we-are-bigots department

    Did you even read the article? Here are some quotes:

    Although IBM plans to deploy several copies of Win2K Pro as its standard internal desktop, the company won't place Win2K Pro on every desktop.

    IBM will not perform an extensive internal deployment of Win2K Server. According to Sullivan, IBM is primarily using its servers, not PC servers. IBM relies on large, clustered servers, like RISC System 3000s and doesn't plan to do much domain reorganization.

    Like a lot of customers, we decided to wait and not get [NT] 4.0,

    When IBM was deciding on a desktop OS, the company didn't use total cost of ownership (TCO) extensively as a determining factor.


    TCO was not necessarily a major factor for us. To achieve a lot of Win2K Professional's benefits, you need Win2K Server," said Sullivan. Because IBM is not using Win2K Server, it wouldn't see those benefits.

    This is actually quite interesting, and not particularly good for Microsoft. IBM is NOT using Win2K server, and many of the benefits(sic) of Win2K Pro are tied to the use of Microsoft's server. So if you decide that the srever is not your cup of tea, it suggests that TCO may not justify upgrading to Win2KPro on your desktop.

    If this is the best the Win NT zealots can come up with, well, I am not impressed.

  • Port to what?
    Another GUI? Another OS?
  • the company was already familiar with Linux, having used it for four years for its DNS and some e-mail. Kenwood was satisfied with Linux and did not wish to take the time to get up to speed on a Unix implementation , according to Calvin.

    Some bravery...

    A Windows machine with similar functionality would probably need to be at least a four-processor system, Calvin said.

    It's dubious claims like this that really make you wonder whether Kenwood considered its options realistically. Mr. Calvin has obviously been active in the Linux community for a long time [fusioni.com], so the real question here is how he convinced Kenwood's management that using Linux for such a business-critical application would be the right path.


  • Re:Linux ERP links (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's also Symix. I don't think they have any future plans for linux support. But their software runs on SCO so it shouldn't be too hard for them to port it. Also thier webpage is Linux/Apache.

    www.symix.com


  • (Didn't anyone every tell you it was rude to call someone by their first name when you don't allow them to return the familiarity, Miss A. Sunny Moo?

    First of all, Perl is not a `product'. That's MBA talk. Perl is a program. Sometimes it's a toy. Sometimes it's a joy. Sometimes it's a way of life. :-)

    What is seeping through around the edges is the same discomfort you would see if you stuck a quiet math major into a vat full of business majors or jocks.

    As a kid, I always threw out the sports section and the business section of the paper, sight unseen. It was the science and technology sections, and magazine, which appealed to me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd now find more the stuff about computers in the business section than the science section. And yes, I do keep the business section now -- it's got Dilbert on the front page. :-)

    You'll find that amongst hard-core programmers--those for whom programming is a game, computers a toy, and who see computer science as having no more to do with computers than has astronomy to do with telescopes--the whole business thing is often an annoyance. Experience constantly shows that programmers as a group mistrust business people in general, especially marketing and sales types, whose job programmers perceive as lying. If you expect to be taken seriously by a programmer, you don't show up in a suit and tie. This strong mutual dislike makes it very hard to run certain kinds of business, but keeping engineering in a different building than marketing certainly helps. :-)

    There are some folks who do computers because they're trying to make a buck. You know the types. "MIS majors", people who are on their way to MBAs. They seem computers as a means to an end: money. These are folks whose idea of a career in computers leads to some sales job or managerial position.

    Real programmers also see computers as a means to an end. It's a complete different end. And most of us think it's just nifty that we get paid to do what we'd just be doing anyway for fun. Yes, the different end is to have fun programming. It's not something I expect business people to empathize with very much.

    Remember the old joke:

    The boss finds that one of the company's critical-path programs is taking way too long, and it's really cutting into the bottom line. So he calls in three different employees, each of whom is separately entasked with addressing the problem.

    The computer engineer buys more memory and a bigger disk.

    The computer scientist notices that a quartic algorithm is being used when a quadratic one would have sufficed.

    The IT pro-fess-ion-al (you need to say that the way Scott Adams does) goes down to his closest Bill-in-a-Box superstore to see whether he can shell out some sheckels to pay for a beta release of W2K.

    If you haven't known "IT pro-fess-ion-als" who were mindless drones, then you are a lucky, lucky man. We used to call them secretaries, librarians, or data entry clerks. Now they're "IT professionals". Give me a break.
  • NT requires 486+.
    Actually, the 75 hours to import a 4 meg db is quite believable. There should be some thingees to turn off that would speed up the process, but I haven't a clue as to where to start looking.
    The quality of MS trolls seems to be deteriorating.
  • ERP is one of the prefect applications for open source since, as you said, so much of the logic is in the implementation.. and more money then I care to think about has been lost due to the lack of an open source ERP package.

    Ironically, the soultion to one of the biggest problems with ERP packages could be exactly what would make an open source ERP package's development possible.. modularisation.

    My limited experence with ERP packages is that they are these monserous programs which do a few things you need, so you must write your own system for the critical part and take advantage of the ERP program for some steps. It seems to me that an orginized effort to develop the necissary modules could provide us with a library that would get anyone who needed ERP a large part of the way to a working system.

    I suspect that the cost of writing more code vs. implementing more SAP work-arrounds would eventually even out.. and the resulting product would be MUCH better suited to the needs of it's users.

    The big question here is what should the modules. It is pretty straight forward to seperate some parts of the process like international tax handling, but some other parts may require a little more though as to how they sould be seperated from the rest of the system. It might be a reasonable vaporware open-source to just try and figure out what needs to be done and make a list of jobs?

    I suspect that it would be extreamly profitable for a company to donate employies to wrok on bits of an open source ERP package because those developers will eventually be the best imaginable implementors of your companies ERP system.

    Jeff

  • PeopleSoft does mention Linux in their release notes about hardware requirements for the upcoming PeopleSoft 8.0. However, it is only offically supported as a database platform. So if you have Oracle, Informix, DB2 or any other PeopleSoft supported ANSI SQL database, it will work.

    The only thing that I can see holding it back from being the application server is the correct version of MicroFocus Cobol. Bea Systems has a current version of Tuxedo for linux, although Jolt for linux would help for those implementing PeopleSoft WebClient apps. I also think the maker of the SQR product (it's been recently aquired so I can't remember the new company's name) has a recent version for linux. There is a development version of MicroFocus, but I believe PS needs the 'Net Express'(??) version that is available on Solaris or AIX.

    From the user's perspective, PeopleSoft is Windows only. PeopleTools is Win32 and the WebClient Java apps while being 100% pure Java, are only supported on IE or Netscape on Windows with the Sun Java Plug-in. They aren't supported on any other platform. Their other web-based product uses HTML 3, but requires NT, IIS, and ASP on the server end.

    I really wish I could run PeopleSoft on Linux. I hate it when Windows crashes when I'm working on a PS upgrade. PeopleSoft and Lotus Notes are the only reasons I need a Windows machine at all. It would be interesting to try their software with Wine. Anyone know if Wine works with ODBC?

  • Even if there was an OpenSource ERP package, a big cost of the implementation are the consultants and/or training of in-house staff. In my experience, Once the implementation is complete and your interfaces to your other systems are stable, you spend your time customizing the delivered package based on your users' needs, appling the patches that were released while you were trying to get the product installed and get ready for the next upgrade.

    I think Linux has the tools that could be to build an erp system: databases, C, perl, PHP, Zope, etc. The biggest obstacle I think would be keeping the business logic current. For example, a human resource/payroll system is usually updated a few times in a year to keep up with all the tax and regulatory changes in each state, county, and city. There are several reports that are required by each state for a myriad of reasons, paycheck garnishment rules and codes, overtime rules, insurance benefits guidelines, etc. All of which are usually different from state to state. Given all of this, I can see why such companies exist. They have the legal people keeping track of all of these issues and the programming staff to implement them. I would guess that if there ever was an open source ERP package, it would be created by a company with the goal of selling the service and support to their customers just like SAP, PeopleSoft, etc. already do.

  • And how is NTs world crashing down? This company wasn't using NT and still isn't using NT so NT and MS lost nothing.

    MS lost a prospective client to Linux. So did the rest of the server companies...

    NT is still growing rapidly. Sure Linux is growing faster, it's easy to double your installed base when the current base is extremely small.

    Correction: Linux's install base was small, and Linux is growing much faster. Some estimate that Linux will eclipse MS "technology" in terms of server usage by the end of 2001. Personally, I think that will come much sooner...

    If you think that W2K is NT4+SP6 you obviously haven't used either one and are either mindlessly repeating what someone equally mis informed [sic] has told you or just making things up.

    I've used them both. W2K beta has a slicker interface but "feels" alot like NT4+SP5. But then I use Linux whenever possible, so I'm definitely not an "expert" Microsoft user.

    Happy computing

  • Strangly, I too installed W2K and was impressed:

    Remote graphics display, ability to mount drives at chosen mount points, a built in SU utility...

    Oh wait! doesn't Unix family OS have these for years?

    Oh OK! so W2K isn't a "warmed over NT4SP6". It's a warmed over Unix ;-)

    Now seriously, if you you STILL have to run a GUI and IE5.x on your "Advanced Server" - then although they learned SOME things they haven't gotten IT yet (pun intended).

    Just my 2c,

  • This is interesting...

    Set your browser to "prompt" before excepting cookies. Now view the SAP/Linux page. You'll notice that every time the animated tux .gif turns and looks at you a cookie message will pop-up.

    To confirm the conspiracies that are now formulating in your brain, right click on the animated tux penguin and choose to view it (as in, view the .gif only). The cookies still try to set each time the penguin looks at you!

    Now to see what happens when I open the .gif in GIMP [gimp.org]...

  • You took my words out of context. So of course it doesn't work out.

    If failing companies come back as a result of better-working computers which are better because of Linux, that may be a message to the better companies that this `Linux' really is pretty good and consequently can make them better.
  • Yes its been argued over and over on /. so it must be fact by now, right? Mindcraft choose poorly supported hardware for Linux, as in anything newer than 5 years old.

    *rolls eyes* yup... yup, I smell a troll.

    You keep on thinking that, and I'll keep using something that works. Never had trouble using Linux as a server, ever. New hardware, old hardware, bleeding edge hardware... no problems. But I digress, I'm now feeding the troll.

  • Oracle is not taking over anything (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not every piece of software must be OSS. Not all closed source is evil, just closed standards. But MS, IBM, Informix, Sybase, and OSS SQLs are more competition to Oracle than MS has on client machines. If there is some threat I have overlooked, flame away. I might learn somthing.

  • Sounds like good news for Microsoft to me. Nobody would expect a company that produces its own servers like IBM to move to Microsoft's flavor. On the other hand, the fact that an anti-Microsoft company like IBM is already committed to Win2K Pro on the desktop says a lot about how big Win2K Pro is going to be on corporate desktops. I use it on my ThinkPad (with Win2K, NT4, Solaris/SPARC 7, and RH5.2/6.1 on my servers), and I've got to say that no other OS comes close to matching the quality of the "user experience," for lack of a better term.

    Just as slapping the Win95 GUI onto NT resulted in a growth explosion for NT4 Server in business, the migration to Win2K on desktops and laptops will ensure a strong role for Win2K on the servers, because Microsoft really has done some impressive things for TCO and administration when the two are used in combination.

    Frankly, whether an IT head decides to use Win2K on the server or not, if he sticks with Win98 clients instead of going to Win2k Pro, he really ought to have his head examined. It really is that good, and I haven't even tried anything beyond RC2 yet.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Having said that, it's still an impressive win for Linux.

    Win, yes. Impressive?
    So one company now runs one machine with linux. A start but not that big of a deal.
    I don't even understand why this story got posted.
  • Yep.

    Generally, a Harrier jet is faster than a walking human. However, I'll bet you 5 dollars than I can run across the street faster than you can get there in a Harrier jet (provided that we both start out on the ground, at 0 km/h).

    Generally, Linux is faster than NT. But if your company buys a quad-processor motherboard and serves static webpages over 100Mbps ethernet, NT will win.

    --

  • You liberate your software; you save yourself from dependency on one vendor.
    You defeat Microsoft; you have to worry about one less greedy monster that can eat you for breakfast.
    The "more value for less money" effect is a direct consequence of embracing Linux/Open Source/Free Software philosophy.
    While IT managers are right about talking money effects, it won't hurt to remind everyone about what causes said effects.

    Please moderate this post down for your protection.
    --

  • Not all "MIS majors" are just out there to make a buck. Some of us are in it because we love it. Maybe we realize that knowing a thing or two about business will allow us to work on the really cool projects.

    I do know what you mean about IT pro-fess-ion-als. I know a lot of them, some of whom do happen to be "MIS majors." But the two are definitely not mutually exclusive.

  • I'm not sure jBASE qualifies as ERP, a term referring to software covering a whole range of business processes and usually requiring some business process re-engineering in order to implement it. ERP vendors include SAP, Baan, J.D. Edwards, etc.

    Having said that, it's still an impressive win for Linux.
  • This is interesting, but from my reading their Linux implementation is just a stop-gap temporary solution to get off the old MD hardware. Sounds like they have not yet picked their ERP software which they will eventually move over the Pick stuff to (they are running Pick on top of Linux at this point, apparently).

    Wonder who it will be? SAP?
  • So Linux is chosen because it needs a less powerful machine to run a legacy app, is this right?

    I'd much rather see the ERP vendors port.

    -Luk-
  • Moreover, the Pick operating system required eight to 10 hours to migrate data to Windows machines for database integration, or even to simply import the data into a spreadsheet -- operations that are nearly instantaneous running Linux.

    Seems to me they are mixing up things very badly here. Hardware, OS, applications, who cares? Kind of like the "What OS are you using? -- Word." people. I hope the guys who made the decision to migrate are better informed.

  • Brave move !? (Score:4)

    by cybaea ( 79975 ) <(moc.aeabyc) (ta) (enalla)> on Saturday November 20, 1999 @09:28AM (#1516387) Homepage Journal

    It seems to me that this is a very brave move by Kenwood. Quoting from the article:

    Kenwood plans its ERP migration sometime in the next few months and has just begun evaluating the various systems.

    In other words, they first decided on Linux and only then they try to find a software package. Very brave, given the uneven support for Linux among the vendors.

    What ERP packages support Linux?

    Is this the start of a new trend? Companies goes Linux for the OS and the software applications will have to follow? That would be a Good Thing.

  • According to the article, Kenwood chose Linux [debian.org] for very intelligent reasons; not because Linux has become the latest IT fad. Their people considered all of the server choices out there and picked the one that best fit their needs.

    Choice is good. Go Linux.

    Happy computing!

  • jBASE appears to be a migration tool, basically a Pick environment, which is used as middleware in order to keep things running while they port or replace thier current ERP system.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Kenwood (Score:3)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday November 20, 1999 @09:29AM (#1516390) Homepage Journal
    I wonder what their relationship is to the Kenwood that makes ham radios. Ham radio has a lot of parallels to free software. Individuals working on technology and sharing the results, networking to have more effect than any one person could, etc.

    Bruce

  • Keyboard input, blame the ap.
    TIMING of keyboard input, blame the OS.
    (sarcasm. This is a demonstration of the superiority of threads and VBA. end sarcasm.)
  • Oracle is the real enemy and is causing most ERP vendors to suffer. It's about time the open source community does more to fight the real enemy--Oracle.

    PostgreSQL is a very serious open source SQL database project that is making a lot of good progress. Over time it is becoming a very capable product.

    If the ERP vendors are suffering due to Oracle, they should put some money into PostgresSQL development.
  • I _think_ I recall some news several months ago about an open source ERP effort -- does someone have a URL? (I'm more qualified to advise on ERP function than to donate code.)
  • There is a way to prevent windows explorer (basically the windows GUI) from loading. I've done it with games before, on old hardware to save RAM. Basically with a quick registry hack, you boot up and load another executable instead of explorer.exe. Drivers, networking and services all load the same as usual.
  • On the other hand, the fact that an anti-Microsoft company like IBM is already committed to Win2K Pro on the desktop says a lot about how big Win2K Pro is going to be on corporate desktops.

    I have no doubt that Win2K is going to be huge on desktops. What other choice is there but Windows? Windows really is a monopoly as far as desktop client OS's is concerned. Exactly what alternatives does IBM have?

    if he sticks with Win98 clients instead of going to Win2k Pro, he really ought to have his head examined

    If you read the article, you will see that IBM, like many businesses never deployed W98. They are doing their first OS update in 5 or so years.

    The interesting comments were that IBM is not deploying W2K servers, that they are not justifying the changeover on a TCO basis (Microsoft keeps blowing that horn in their sales literature), they are not switching all of their desktops over to W2K, and so on. This is very different from the impression that the original poster was trying to make with his "W2K all around" at IBM posting.

  • I think FUD will eventually just become CCA

    How exactly do you pronounce that? Ca-ca?

    Er, maybe that's not such a good idea...

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • Do what I do. I run the peoplesoft client on Win98 using VMWARE. Also, use the (damn) citrix metaframes also. Works fine and my Windows never crashes. PS. Don't try to let vmware use your current windows partition. You will have nothing but problems.
  • In reply to your comments about the various ERP vendors supporting Linux, let me add the following about Peoplesoft (yes, they're my employer):

    PeopleSoft currently supports the use of Linux as a DB server as long as you're running a certified version of your RDBMS.

    From what I know (which may not be much as I work in a completely different area) we are planning to fully support Linux once we get a proper version of Tuxedo on Linux (the current one still seems to have some technical issues) ...

    No, this is not an official Peoplesoft statement; this is my view of Peoplesoft's Linux position ...

  • It's important because of familiarity. As you so rightly say about BSD, more familiar people are with something, the more likely they are to specify it. And businesspeople have the power of the purse, so their first idea is to use a system similar to what they have on the desktop: Windows.

    That's the reason for the rise of Windows in the server space. A businessperson probably knows a drone-style-programmer who can do VB, and ASP is basically moving VB to the server.

    The only way to counteract this is to encourage Unix in the desktop, in my view. Make people more familiar with it, and they're more likely to specify it when the time comes to do a server-based system.

    D



    ----
  • I think you are right about this. BSD's have a head start in this space. BSDs just got bogged down from its AT&T roots. I do prefer Linux because it has all its own code. I think Linux is head and shoulders above BSDs to get on the desktop on intel and that is important for OSS otherwise it may all go down the drain. I tend to like any UNIX in general and I consider it a victory if BSDs win any battle.
    You seem to be suffering from a couple misunderstandings, although your heart seems in a good place.

    One of these misunderstandings is about "BSD's AT&T roots". I hope you understand that BSD doesn't have any AT&T code. You're thinking of the "bogging down" of the AT&T-fuelled FUD during the lawsuit days. What BSD does have is decades worth of highyl refined software engineering. You just don't have that in Linux, or most of it. Sometimes it shows. But time should smooth even those rough edges, and faster this time around.

    The next misunderstanding is about the Linuxes having "all their own code". What they have, by and large, is rather new code. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes it isn't. And the part of their code which isn't new tends to derive from the BSD project, anyway. :-) And the Linux kernel, at least, certainly has Bell Labs roots: the API is still Unix, just like BSD and so many other operating systems variously loved and hated.

    You're right in that it doesn't matter which flavor of Unix wins. Unix is Unix. Granted, I'd personally be a lot less happy stuck on AIX, Irix, or HP/UX than I would on BSD, Linux, or SunOS (in that order), but it would be infinitely better than any of the populist non-Unix systems that are out there. I'm sure we'd all agree on that.

    But wait a second. Wins what? I'm trying to figure out what is meant by this whole "Battle of the Desktop" notion. Since I've always run nothing but Unix on my desktop, and so have my friends, and so do nearly everybody I nkow from the government, research, and educational labs in my immediate vicinity, this has a very odd sound.

    What appears to be meant here by "desktop" is the desktop of people who don't program, people who by and large don't really understand or like computers. Certainly Unix provides a more programmer-friendly desktop environment, but a lot of folks aren't friendly with programmers. But it also provides a flexible substructure with which to apply idiot-friendly veneers. Of course, programmers have never seen much point in doing this. But idiots, users, and other non-(computer-)professionals have money, and so people who are trying to sell systems to idiots have a vested interest in doing this.

    I'm not entirely sure what I think of this idea. I don't know about the real viability of this whole "make the masses use Unix" idea. I could argue most any direction on it. Yes, it's a better base. But Unix is a professional system, made by programmers for programmers. I'm not sure that non-programmers are ever going to be enamoured of our idiosyncratic charms.

    But you know what? I don't really care all that much about what non-programmers are doing. Like most people, my initial concerns are for my own world. Is it something I'm familiar with? Can I get what I want to do done? Does it make me happy? Is there a risk of that going away? I'm sure the non-programmers feel the same way.

    So when you say "the battle of the desktop", you're not talking about my desktop. I'm running Unix in various flavors there. I always have, and I can't imagine that changing. No, You're actually talking about the attempt to imitate a {non,anti}-Unix system enough to make non-programmers happy. To do that, you need to make sure that they can get done what they want to get done; you need to make something that they're familiar with, which means you have to copy Microsoft. I'm not very interested in that, but I can see why some people are, whether for economic or geek-ego reasons -- which, mind you, I'm not saying are bad.

    Finally, as for "Linux having more for the desktop than BSD", I've no idea what you mean there. My only guess, which is probably wrong, is that you might mean "Linux is better at making non-programmers feel like their still running Microsoft stuff?". If so, I don't know why programmers care, so that must not be what you mean.

    I've got both systems various BSDs and various Linuxes. Both classes of machine run exactly the same things. I don't know what you've got that runs on Linuxes that doesn't run on BSD, but it must not be something that I care about, because I've never noticed such a thing. :-)

    For me, the BSD systems end up being a lot easier to manage (sidenote: nonprogrammers often can't even manage their own general-purpose computers, and issue that can't be underestimated) than the Linuxes are, and are in general a lot more comfortable for me personally. To my critical eye, they're more refined, robust, integrated, complete, and friendly. For me. I'm sure the Microsoft people say the same things about their systems. Familiarity is important, and I've been playing with BSD for longer than some of you have been alive. I've seen it develop and grow, evolve through decades of hard work by smart people constantly making it better. Because I've watched this happen, it's all very familiar to me. That may be the most dominating factor here.

  • The only way to counteract this is to encourage Unix in the desktop
    I guess I need to add a new term to my us2them [perl.com] vocabulary list. Or maybe it shouldn't go there, but on some buzzword-bingo game. In any event, if you replace "the desktop" with "non-programmers' personal computing environments", your sentence makes much more sense to me. Why is that? Why do programmers who have never run anything but Unix on "the desktop" now hear "the desktop" being used in a completely foreign way?

    Anyway, let's look at this "familiarity" thing. Why are professional programmers and other power users in scientific, research, and academic situations more apt to use Unix than are people in non-technical positions? Once we dispense with the sound technical reasons, plain old familiarity is the remaining answer. Power users, professional programmers, and related geeks have historically been exposed during their critical, formative years to Unix systems at university. That's what we're used to, so that's what we're most productive with. And those are the sectors where we tended to land jobs, so that's what we brought with us. As we moved into purchasing roles, or even advisory ones, we knew what we wanted. The importance of how universities fostered the Unix mindset (tool-and-filter resuable component philososphy, simpler is better, separate privileges, infinite configurability and hookability, full source access, etc.) in this set of technologists cannot be understated. This customs and comforts of our original experiences with computers forged our utlimate worldview, one that as much rejected IBM and their drones then as it rejects Microsoft and their drones today.

    In the early 80s, while I was first fiddling around with BSD running on PDP-11s and later VAX-11s (with complete source, mind you; what a difference that made!), those same computers at less research-oriented or technology-oriented institutions were still running their original proprietary DEC operating systems--as did my high school, where we had RSTS/E to play with. If you went to UW-Madison, you got DEC hardware running Unix. If you went to a smaller, more business-oriented school (or my high school; sigh) you got the same computers running closed systems instead. They were grooming aye-tee professionals, after all, not programmers. :-(

    In the the boring, cravat-choked business world where once we had IBM, MVS, IBM mainframes, Cobol, and DP-drones doing 3270 screen layout, we now have in their respective slots Microsoft, WinXX, IBM PCs, BASIC, and IT drones doing CGI screen layout. Well, some things haven't changed all that much, eh? :-)

    It concerns me to see students receiving degrees in MCS, ECE, and yes, even CS without anything but Microsoft experiences. Yes, it's really happening. I've seen schools, colleges, and even universities where that's all the students see.

    The students produced have no under-the-hood experience. They don't have source code. They don't know how to go from a directory of C source code and turn that into an installed program. All they know about is buying "applications". They aren't used to rearranging their operating systems to suit their needs. They aren't used to remote administration or complete automation. They're used to using MS-this and MS-that, even for programming. They're used to pushing cutesy hieroglyphic happycons. They're used to traversing seventeen levels of menus vgrep-style in a futile hunt-and-peck. And of course, they're accustomed to doing repetitive tasks again and again and again redundantly and repetivively.

    This is what they expect. This is what they want. This is what they demand. And if you expect to "win over their desktops", you'll have to give it to them. And thereby infernally frustrate the rest of us.

    And these are next generation of so-called computer people. Be very afraid. I know I am. Go to your educational institutions, from junior high schools on, and show them Another Way. The Jesuits were right, and Bill Gates knows this.

  • I worked with the Bann product for about a year. We ran the sofotware on HP/UX. They did claim to be able to run on NT but I never heared a confirmed case. I know someone in the Atlanta area tried but failed miserably. This is close to a year ago now though and things may have changed. Sad really because I think Baan is a better product than SAP but they have not done as well.

    IMO the next great ERP will be ( is being ;> ) written in Java and whichever platform runs Java the best for the least cost is going to do the best in this market. (Hmmm sounds so simple)
    But I guess there can also be the "well we run Linux for everything else let's just use it for our ERP."
    That HP hardware we had was damn expensive.

  • I'm sorry about the terminology confusion - yes, that's what I meant by "the desktop". I personally run Linux and Irix on my desktop and they both serve me very well.

    The big difference in my mind between the IBM mainframe world and the MS world is quality. IBM may have been the villain in the old days (which I do indeed remember), but nobody every said the base IBM software didn't work reliably. I had a sneaking admiration for IBM and their gleaming machines, even though all my friends hated the company.

    People cursed their IBM systems because they were hard to use, and in my little exposure to an AS/400, I can see it takes a totally different approach to programing. In some ways, it's pretty cool, but the learning curve is a vertical brick wall.

    Now people curse their Microsoft solutions because they're highly prone to failure. Personally, I'd rather have a system hard to learn (IBM mainframes) then our current state where systems are easy to learn, impossible to keep running.

    Curiously enough, Unix is much, much easier to learn than an IBM mainframe, or at least an AS/400. Unix is designed to be a complex agglomoration of simple things; to program on an AS/400 you have to understand how pretty much everything fits together to proceed to step one; this is pretty tough.

    So I think in the end, programming environments have basically gotten worse, since you can't trust them anymore, even as computers have gotten better and faster then ever.

    But in terms of the rest of your argument, about how we have to emulate undesirable aspects of Microsoft programming environments to get people to use our stuff, I think that's true to some degree. But I think it can be done with environments such as KDE and Enlightenment in such a way that we still have our command lines, our cron and our automated processing. In theory, that should give people the best of both worlds, right?

    D

    ----
  • But in terms of the rest of your argument, about how we have to emulate undesirable aspects of Microsoft programming environments to get people to use our stuff, I think that's true to some degree. But I think it can be done with environments such as KDE and Enlightenment in such a way that we still have our command lines, our cron and our automated processing. In theory, that should give people the best of both worlds, right?
    Well, that's the theory. It isn't working out that way though. These are all considerably less amenable to CLI interaction and text-based processing than Unix should be. And don't start in on documentation, or the Winix people will just come flaming me for expecting the same care in craftsmanship as we have grown to expect in that silly old stuff. They'll just remind me that I don't understand Winix at all. Nor care to.
  • It seems that Kenwood chose Linux for all the right reasons, in particular:
    1. it ran on their preferred hardware, and
    2. they were already familiar and comfortable with it

    The last point is, I think, interesting. Quoting from the article:

    Another reason for picking Linux over traditional Unix was because the company was already familiar with Linux, having used it for four years for its DNS and some e-mail.

    So, I wonder, is DNS and e-mail the ultimate "killer apps" for Linux that will finally propel it into the IT departments across United States and the rest of the world?

  • Um... perhaps we should have a quick lesson on what an ERP is:

    Enterprise Resource Planning: An integrated information system that serves all departments within an enterprise. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry, ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than proprietary software written by or for one customer. ERP modules may be able to interface with an organization's own software with varying degrees of effort, and, depending on the software, ERP modules may be alterable via the vendor's proprietary tools as well as proprietary or standard programming languages.

    An ERP system can include software for manufacturing, order entry, accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, purchasing, warehousing, transportation and human resources. The major ERP vendors are SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Baan and J.D. Edwards. Lawson Software specializes in back-end processing that integrates with another vendor's manufacturing system.

    Kenwood will not be contributing code or distributing Linux, but rather using Linux.
  • The German company SAP have already announced a Linux port of their R/3 ERP system. SAP's products are widely used in the US and here in Europe.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction

  • See also (Score:3)

    by cybaea ( 79975 ) <(moc.aeabyc) (ta) (enalla)> on Saturday November 20, 1999 @09:41AM (#1516419) Homepage Journal

    See also the article The "Lintel" Value Proposition [planetit.com] on the same site.

    It makes an interesting read and basically argues the same point: you get more "bang for your hardware buck" with Linux.

    All of this is an unfortunate distraction, because if you talk to IT managers who are actually deploying Linux in their businesses, they won't talk about software liberation or the defeat of Microsoft or the means of production being in the hands of the programmers. They'll talk pure capitalism: more value for less money.

    Good stuff; should be required reading by all IT decision makers.

  • Well...consider this: If it's good for the losers, why shouldn't it be good for the winners? Maybe it's better to have failing companies switch over to Linux and then come out better because of it. Then there could be nifty commercials..."We switched to Red Hat Linux...shouldn't you?" :) Or maybe it's best to just do our best(well...all most of us can do is sit around and use it and complain about bugs)and let things fall where they may. It's better to let people do what they want rather than force someone elses' intentions upon them.

  • One major company after another. This next year is gonna be a lot of fun.

    Lets see if W2K can be anything more than a warmed over NT4 Service Pack 6. If it isn't, Microsoft is far more screwed than any of the MSFT shareholders apparently realize.
  • It's kind of odd to see you belittle drones using CGI programs when most of those CGI programs invoke Perl programs.
    Perl isn't about CGI.
    Unix isn't about Perl.
    And technology isn't about Bill Gates.

    Got that? Good.

    And while I'm at it, discussion isn't about argumentum ad hominem. Trolling at people just because they've got a name you recognize is an old sport, but hardly sporting.

    You have a distinct style of changing the subject toward irrelevant strawmen, expecting people to waste time on something that wasn't even being discussed. Whether you're being an idiot or devious, it's a chump play. It takes no courage to do so as a coward. Use a real name next time, and maybe you'll get a real answer.

  • In a company as HUGE as IBM with so many buisness units, there is bound to be some point where one group goes one way while another goes another.

    The fact is IBM loves Linux for the simple fact that they have all of this wonderful product that works only on their expensive AIX Unix workstations. With the advent of BSD and Linux, they can now push those products out onto a super cheap and super prevailent x86 platform(a platform which they don't have to worry about maintaining no less!).

    Of course, there is another buisness unit that is interested in selling x86 hardware with Win2K on it. In both cases, this doesn't mean that IBM has a company wide policy of liking one OS or another.

  • Well, understand that IBM is an unusual case. Any large scale internal deployment they undertake would be a test case for their consulting division, not necessarily because it's the best TCO-justified solution.
    --
  • Oracle's ERP apps will be supported on Linux with the release of R11i, due for release Q1,2000.
  • As a service to the Slashdot community, the red pen is providing this capsule summary of Tom Christiansen's comment, lest anyone spend more that a few valuable seconds spotting it for the drivel it is.
    • I am King of the Hill. That Hill is the Perl Hill, the Computer Science Hill or the Blustery Intellectual Hill, depending on which slightly different Hill makes it clearer that I'm King of It. In short, I am King of the Hill by definition, so don't bother attempting to dispute it.

    • Now, some people have suggested that there might be other hills to be King of. To be King of these Hills, you must read the sports page, have an MBA, be interested in commerce or, in some other way embrace a world view that deviates from mine. Don't fall for it! Their hills are not The Hill (of which only I am King). In order to show that their hills are of no value, I shall mock them and call them clever names. Seriously, we all know that "secretaries, librarians, or data entry clerks" aren't fully qualified human beings. Give me a break.

      Do I mention I'm King of the Hill? Oh look! My masturbatory post has been moderated way up. It's good to be the King.

    You're welcome.
  • My nick, ERPbridge, is for Einstein Rosen Podolsky bridge (IOW, an interdimensional wormhole, like in Sliders).

    Just an interesting coincidence that this article mentions ERP in a different aspect.
  • My theory is that we can continue using the command line stuff as long as there is a Unix, and the people who hate command lines can use the GUI.

    I didn't imply that the GUI would blend together seamlessly with the command line, or that you could easily automate GUI stuff. But you can use the existing interfaces to automate tasks.

    The big problem I see in the present state of computing is that we're making simple things complex in a quest to make complex things simple. In the end, simple winds up not even being an option, and that's an enormous regression from the Unix way.

    For instance, C programmers under Unix can do a three line plus include files hello, world. It will be command line only, but it gets people started. C++ programmers in Windows use a Wizard to generate a 500 line mess that nobody understands. I find it mind-boggling, but my sense is that most people learning programming on Windows don't understand what the hello, world windows program works or what it does. This is bound to result in a brick wall and far less of an appetite for programming in the future.

    I suspect that's a major reason for your desire to not even learn Windows as we see it. And I must agree with you, even though I've been doing all too much in the way of Windows stuff over the past few years. I don't particularly want to understand it either, and that inevitably limits my skills and chances for advancement. I'm hoping the recent rise of Unix/Linux will fix this for me - I'm getting an increasing number of Linux jobs.

    D

    ----
  • Tom Christiansen writes:
    • Use a real name next time, and maybe you'll get a real answer.
    I think his failure to obtain a real answer is due in large part by his failure to address a real person. Instead, he engaged a paranoid, bitter and infantile egomaniac. Results were as one would expect.
  • jBASE is NOT Pick. jBASE is a Multi-Value DBMS that uses the Pick methodology on databases. This basically means that Normalized tables are thrown out the door in favor of real-world friendly delimited records stored in a hashed file. Multiple values can be stored in one field(much like Oracle 8i's nested tables, but much faster). Beyond that, jBASE has ODBC and JDBC connectivity. They also have a free, 3 user development/trial system available for download. Check them out at www.jbase.com [jbase.com].

    There is an Open source project in development right now to create the same sort of thing. It is called MaVerick. Check it out at www.maverick-dbms.org [maverick-dbms.org]

  • wow (Score:1)

    by viper21 ( 16860 )
    It's nice to see that people are creating the ability for people to migrate from other software platforms to linux easily. From the little bit of information I saw about the Pick software they were using, its surprising this migration ability exists.

    Check out the new case I made up on my webpage there, just click on the comptuers section and let me know how you like it!

    -S
    Scott Ruttencutter

  • Re:Companies wising up to FUD (Score:4)

    by Gurlia ( 110988 ) on Saturday November 20, 1999 @09:48AM (#1516433)

    Wow. Seems like, regardless whether there was any truth behind the Mindcraft "vindication" (and IMNSHO it is valid, much as I personally wish it wasn't), Linux still wins in more typical situations than Mindcraft used in their tests.

    I remember a prof from my undergraduate years who took a serious amount of salt to any "benchmark" result or any single form of CPU performance measurement. His argument is simple: benchmarks, CPU measurements (like MIPS, MHz, etc.) are basically sticking a single number to complex system/device. There are so many parameters involved that sticking a number to something in this way is like collapsing a high-dimensional object into 1D and using that as a measuring stick.

    This is the case with the Mindcraft benchmark (and any other benchmark for that matter) -- their results simply show that in a certain environment, under a certain configuration, Linux loses to NT. OT1H this simply means Linux has room for improvement, OTOH it says (close to) nothing about how Linux performs in other environments. And then you've got to take into account all sorts of other factors, like the cost of maintenance, the minimal required hardware, etc., that benchmark results hardly begin to take into consideration.

    Well, my point is, while we're working on improving Linux so that it won't lose to NT in environments like Mindcraft's benchmark, we can rest assured that in general, Linux is better than NT, in terms of performance under typical environments, cost of ownership/maintenance, and giving desired performance on minimal hardware, etc.. This case simply proves this point. We've had many reports of this sort in the past, and I'm sure we'll be getting a lot more as people begin to realize the advantages of Linux.

    As for FUD... slowly, as more and more people step out of the M$ realm and discovers that the "outside world" is not exactly like M$ would like to have them believe, I think FUD will eventually just become CCA (confidence, certainty, assurance).

  • Interesting how this works.

    Someone wants to quickly set up a DNS server, so they grab a rusty PC and install Linux, instead of buying a pricy UNIX machine or buying a copy of Windows NT.

    This seems lets people get aquainted to Linux and consider it for larger applications.

    I've seen this happens elsewhere too.

  • Pick was an OS, now a shell on Unix or NT (Score:4)

    by FishTaco ( 86224 ) on Saturday November 20, 1999 @09:52AM (#1516435) Homepage
    Pick was originally developed as a business information tool that ran on bare hardware. Ports took months and were only available for a very few platforms. About 10 years ago, Pick and a number of clones (Ardent UniVerse, etc) began porting to Unix. In the past five years they ported to NT. Recently they ported to Linux.
    The Pick environment runs as a shell on these Ports.

    The problem with legacy Pick (like McDonnell Douglas) is that there is no connectivity to the outside world. The only way to get data into and out of it is via 9-track tape and serial port, typically. Any modern Pick shell running on Unix or NT would beat this easily. Can you say samba?

    One of the features of Pick is it non-first-normal form database structure, using strings with delimiters to store all data. This is extremely flexible, and something that Kenwood is not going to leave. jBase incorporates this structure. They will probably be able to leave their application software largely unaltered.

    Pick does have an interesting similarity to Linux. The early ports to Intel hardware had 8 serial lines running off a 286, blowing away DOS and Windows for speed.

    Another interesting bit of trivia - this ancient McDonnell Douglas system incorporates the date windowing that was recently the subject of a patent. This isn't a recent development - they've been using this windowing for 25 years!

    More info at the Pick FAQ [jes.com]

  • Hams (Score:2)

    by dattaway ( 3088 )
    That's why I searched around their site looking at their radios. I found lots of neat products that connect to almost anything, such as portable radios with integrated digital cameras. Fun stuff!

  • The reason a large percentage of software today is so bloated is because the companies behind them are basically there for the $$$ rather than technical excellence. Yes, some might have technical excellence as a secondary goal, but basically, the bottom-line is $$$. I've always believed that:

    In order to do something well, you've got to be
    interested in doing it well. If you're doing it for the sake of something else, you probably won't do it well.

    When your primary goal is $$$, chances are that you wouldn't mind compromising a little quality to get the product out the door fast, to beat your competitors. A little bloat here, a little unnecessary feature there, that won't hurt, we'll just ship a bigger (and therefore "better") product, with a few extra features that our marketing folks can boast of to our customers (but which they really don't need). Hence, bloatware. OTOH, the beauty of Open Source is that the people who contribute do so because they are interested in making it better, not because they have to get it done so that they can feed their families. Hence, they will not compromise with bloat and unnecessary features.

Slashdot Top Deals

It was kinda like stuffing the wrong card in a computer, when you're stickin' those artificial stimulants in your arm. -- Dion, noted computer scientist

Close