Linux For The Future (Information Week)

Posted Feb 22, 2005 15:06 UTC (Tue) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

The Novel CEO just doesn't “get it”.

Posted Feb 22, 2005 15:55 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Leaving aside the fact that the statement is not true (thousands of executables in common, the LSB, etc), it doesn't seem like good business to claim that your system is completely different and therefore incompatible when you aren't the market leader (other than in some geographic regions, like Germany).

Posted Feb 22, 2005 16:08 UTC (Tue) by bluefoxicy (guest, #25366) [Link]

I want to make a "New" Linux distribution myself with "futuristic" features. I want a desktop Linux distribution with enhanced, transparent security that I can later augment into an enterprise server distribution to compete with Novell and Red Hat. I want some serious large scale administration tools; one administrator should be able to control 50,000 or 100,000 machines without breaking a sweat; millions of machines is a good goal. I also want to make my own enhanced filesystem, and an enhanced on-site backup system which will let a machine restore itself from backup in 3 seconds.

Even if such a distribution were created, and it were like a new, amazing, explosively enhanced product, it'd still be on the whole Linux. Old Linux apps would run. At the same time, it'd be radically different from other Linux distributions in a sense.

I think the difference Novell was trying to emphasize was probably more along the lines of the direction SuSE and now Novell took from a basic LFS system to get to what they have. They're still fairly similar though, aren't they? They use RPMs at least; the package manager says a lot about the system. On the other hand, last I looked SuSE was using YaST2, so their configuration and installation was radically different in look-and-feel. I haven't seen the new SuSE from novell though; I can't find a download site.

Posted Feb 22, 2005 16:38 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

And then some people wonder why Linux business model wont work. This *Guys* are presumably competing for scratchs. Instead of betting for strong standards, strong interoperability with each other and with Windows World, and pledge for a "long term market dominination", where there will be space for several Novells or RH, no!, they are contesting who will be king of "Our(Linux)" yet very small neighborhood.

It seems there isn't a coherent meduim to long term strategy plan, besides scale economy in the kernel. Sad, but it is almost as no one be willing to compete directly with Microsoft, which in IMO could very well be a easy victory, once customers realize that IT is an engineering science, and selling software in a box, each time more full of bloat, more full of bugs, more full of security holes, is very close to a Marketing scam.

Tailor-made software could be very expensive for the buyer, but if there would be strong stantards with strong interoperability, there would be for sure a huge common code base and a huge economy of scale, larger and much much more effective than it is possible today, and tailor-made software will be possible. From every angle i look at it, it seemed as simple as that. But when there isn't either standards or interoperability, and every player is pushing to is own side, only remains for LInux to die a quiet and dignifying dead.