Steve Steve Steve
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| Author | Content |
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| azerthoth Jul 27, 2007 1:40 PM EDT |
Lets get one thing straight, I am not in the camp of 'Free as in Freeloader' when it comes to Linux. Its just that I have not found that the distributions that I have paid for can compare to what I can get and the support I receive for the ones that cost me only a little bandwidth and a blank disc or two. That being said, my same old tired complaint of your articles continues with the newest. Here you have 5 Linux projects that did not deserve to die and every one of them a corp-rat project. Well, here we have a list of over 60 distro's that should have been on the list. Each of them with a redeeming point or two of its own, and yes there are one or two dead corporate offerings there too, where are they in your list? http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=discontinued Darn it, is it possible for you to get off the corporate kick? Its getting stale, kind of like my perpetual pointing out your love affair with open source for profit. Nothing wrong with that but yikes a little balance would be nice. |
| dinotrac Jul 27, 2007 1:53 PM EDT |
>Darn it, is it possible for you to get off the corporate kick? Umm, what do you have against corporations? In case you haven't noticed, corporations allow most of us to pay our bills and provide most of what we use in our lives. Mini-rant aside, the preamble to the story said it all: He was paralleling another story about companies that died. I enjoyed the article, and have fond memories of three of his choices. I remember the Cobalt Cube -- what an amazing little bugger it was -- back in 2000!!!! I wonder, had they remained independent, if they wouldn't now be producing the ultimate MythTV appliance. LinuxCare has a warm spot (before the meltdown), because there were some good and passionate folks working there -- including in the trenches. My old LT bud Arne Flones did some writing for them, and that is enough by itself for me to think warm thoughts. As to Caldera OpenLinux --- Wow! I still remember the nifty "Tetris" game installer, not to mention Ransom Love working the Caldera booth and Linuxworld alongside the Caldera grunt. I didn't even know I was asking questions of the head honcho! |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 27, 2007 2:17 PM EDT |
Cobalt Cube? Hmm....Quick Ebay search, two available, $199 plus shipping. Well worth it, if they had published anything what so ever about its hardware specs. The form factor is very pretty, and even an expansion slot to make it into a WIFI-AP. (personally, I like using a WIFI card rather than having it built-in, because the technology changes faster than CPU) Oh well. On the story itself, keep in mind it was written by SJVN-Hyde, who writes for Linux Watch. Anywhere else, SJVN-Jeckyl would have written something far less about corporations and more about individual efforts. I was unhappy when Progeny failed. I think if it had succeeded, it could have been doing what Ubuntu is now doing, giving Linux a very good mainstream name. |
| tuxchick Jul 27, 2007 3:00 PM EDT |
No mention of Libranet, which officially kicked the bucket a couple of years when its founder died. I recall a lot of Libranet users asking his son to release the code for the installer and the administration interface, but as far as I know he never did. Libranet was the first user-friendly Debian derivative that worked right. It wasn't mucked-over Debian like Ubuntu, but real Debian minimally-altered with a friendly installer and graphical system administration interface. I even bought a copy. I didn't think Caldera was all that great. It was a buggy, weird Debian/Unix hybrid with "personalities" and other funky things. A pointless FrankenLinux with wholesale chunks of Unix grafted into it. I tested it extensively for my job at the time, and we spent a fair bit of time staring at it and going "yep, that's broken too." But the desktop edition did turn a lot of new users on to Linux. **edit** I just remembered that Libranet had its own repos that weren't always compatible with the Debian repos. But it was still a breakthrough distribution at the time. Now all the rabble are releasing Debian-based distros. Pff. |
| dthacker Jul 28, 2007 6:08 AM EDT |
I would not be working in IT today if it hadn't been for SCO. My first admin job? SCO Xenix on an IBM PC-AT with an 8 port Computone board driving Wyse 30's. I'm still ticked that they morphed into such a bunch of low-lifes. Now please excuse me, I need to re-install and there are about 17 of these 5.25 inch floppies to load... Dave |
| dinotrac Jul 28, 2007 6:23 AM EDT |
The first time I touched any kind of Unix was a SCO system back in the early 90s. And touched is the right word - My wife was working for a company that set up SCO-based systems for doctor's office. I would occasionally hang around her office while she finished things up. SCO -- the real SCO, not the current abomination that calls itself SCO, made some very cool things possible. |
| vainrveenr Jul 29, 2007 12:10 PM EDT |
Quoting:No mention of Libranet, which officially kicked the bucket a couple of years when its founder died.Remember Libranet as well... IIRC, touted as something like "Debian on steroids". Also recall that its install routine enforced a mandatory 400MB+ /(root) partition. Another even smaller mini-distro just about concurrent with Libranet was Bonzai Linux, the latter touted as "Debian on a diet" (again, IIRC) Quoting:I didn't think Caldera was all that great. It was a buggy, weird Debian/Unix hybrid with "personalities" and other funky things.A "funky thing" about Caldera was its installer routine... remember lisa's lizard? Also agree with azertoth in the first point above. As a related point, although IBM's commercial OS/2 was a non-Linux OS that died a slow death a while back at the hands of Microsoft's release of Windows 95/NT and MS's resulting marketing muscle (not to mention some other factors), still, whatever happened to the petition of a few years back "to make OS/2 Open Source or at least part of its components" ?? Petition still at http://www.os2world.com/petition/ There is the osFree project, http://www.osfree.org/doku/, which is an attempt to build an open source OS/2 clone, but never heard back regarding any other results of the os2world petition. Is the continued lack of a FOSS OS/2 a further indication that OS/2 will remain in perpetuity as roadkill just like SJVN's chosen Linux companies meeting similar fates?? |
| flufferbeer Jul 29, 2007 6:35 PM EDT |
Quoting:Is the continued lack of a FOSS OS/2 a further indication that OS/2 will remain in perpetuity as roadkill just like SJVN's chosen Linux companies meeting similar fates??Probably. One could say the same thing for what has happened to NetWare on the server end ever since Novell acquired SuSE. |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 29, 2007 7:17 PM EDT |
"Is the continued lack of a FOSS OS/2 a further indication that OS/2 will remain in perpetuity as roadkill just like SJVN[-Hyde]'s chosen Linux companies meeting similar fates??" It may have more to do with shared intellectual property. OS/2 was substantially developed in cooperation with Microsoft, which is why it looked so much like Windows. In fact, if the images in my blurry memory are correct, the OS/2 interface looked much like Win3.1 but with hints of Win95 thrown in. IBM was _furious_ with Microsoft as MS ceased development of OS/2 in favor of the Microsoft-gets-all-of-the-money Windows. As such, IBM may not be legally _able_ to throw open the code of OS/2. Having seen even less of NetWare than I have of OS/2, I must leave it at merely suggesting that such encumberances might also exist there. |
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