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If You Were Wondering When Wall St. Would Get It . . .and Novell, Not a Bit Scared |
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Friday, March 19 2004 @ 02:51 AM EST
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Melanie Hollands in IT Manager's Journal has a devastating column, "SCOX: High valuations are a PIPE dream." She says she'd be more encouraged if SCO "would refocus on software sales, rather than its focus on litigation as a potential source of income". Well, wouldn't we all? She doesn't mention any names, but I expect we can all fill in the gap and figure out who the analyst is she is referring to here: "One sell-side analyst has a 'buy' recommendation on the stock and recently wrote 'Our belief is that the stock has now baked in most of the negative sentiment, and this is an excellent time for contrarian investors to look at this stock. With the share price of $11.60 the company has cash/share of $4.70 and no meaningful debt.' Since then, the stock fell 24% from the $11.60 level to the Tuesday close of $8.80. This same analyst has a $45 long-term price target on SCOX. In my opinion, such an optimistic long-term price target for SCOX seems, at best, to be a PIPE dream." I hesitate to even write about this, because every time their stock goes down, they escalate the circus, and we all have to read again about how they are attacked by unknown persons they believe are in the Linux community, whatever that is.
I am not the only one who read their 10Q and listened to their teleconference and was left with a Huh? There is, however, no missing Ms. Hollands' meaning here: "There are so many accounting 'treatments' and 'adjustments' that the company is making in relation to its PIPE deal and other matters (write-downs, one-time charges, amortization of intangibles, marking-to-market the convertible preferred) that it makes the 'utility' of an EPS number pretty blurry. However, for those that are sticklers for detail the company reported an EPS loss of $0.16. However, the various 'benefits' of accounting 'treatments' served to diminish the loss reported by SCO Group. Excluding these 'benefits,' the company reported a larger EPS loss of $0.34. Bottom line: in my opinion, this is really just shuffling deck chairs on a sinking ship." Novell Doesn't Sound a Bit Scared of SCO Meanwhile, Novell has announced their new SuSE Linux, with the 2.6 kernel, and the consumer version comes with support: "The new SUSE 9.1 Linux, set to go on sale at retail stores in early May, will come in two versions -- a $29.95 personal edition and a $79.95 professional edition for corporate users. By comparison, the full version of Microsoft's Windows costs $199.95 for the home edition and $100 more for the professional version. In addition SUSE Linux is less expensive than Lindows, a different version of Linux that retails for $49.95. . . . "The new Novell Linux will add support for Intel Corp.'s Itanium chips. These are 64-bit processors that can handle more demanding tasks than the 32-bit Pentium chips found in most desktop computers. It will also allow users to boot up the operating system directly from the CD-ROM disk, without having to install it to the computer's hard drive. This will enable first-time users to experiment with Linux without having to wipe out data already stored on the computer." Line56 has a few more details: "Suse 9.1 contains the 2.6 kernel of Linux, which has incremental benefits over the 2.4 kernel. 'There's better hardware support, better threading capabilities, and improved performance of applications,' claims Eckert. "That's good news for small businesses that want to get into desktop Linux, which can be a cheaper alternative than rival operating systems, but what about the specter of SCO? Eckert says that Novell, itself in a battle with SCO, has an indemnity plan on the server side, and that 'there's no noise about the desktop,' so prospects shouldn't feel intimidated." InfoWorld has a bit more: "In tandem with the Professional Edition Novell also announced SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal Edition, which comes with a version of Linux that can be booted and used from the CD drive, called LiveCD. This enables users to try out the product without having to install it on their machines. "'LIVE CD doesn't require any modifications to your hard drive to run a full desktop version of Linux. It will actually mount your existing hard drive so you can get at all of your documents. If you decide you like it, you just pop that CD out and pop in CD number 2 and install it,' said Ungashick. "As with the Professional Edition, Personal Edition users can chose to have the product automatically set up a partition on the hard drive that allows them to boot Windows as well as Linux. Both versions also include the latest Gnome and KDE desktops. "Gnome 2.4.2 improvements focus on usability and overall user comfort, according to company officials. But also contains new features including CD burning capabilities, the Gaim universal instant messaging client, and simplified printing configuration. New applications included are Gnome Meeting video conferencing system and Evolution, a groupware suite that has SSL connectivity for security. "KDE 3.2.1 includes a new personal information manger called Kontact, which offers a consistent interface for e-mail, calendar, address book and notes applications. The new version also sports an instant messenger called Kopete, which makes is possible to make fast contacts through MSN AIM, ICQ and IRC, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber. "The company has also improved the abilities of the file manager as well as the Web browser Konqueror. Users can now import Internet Explorer bookmarks, and can more quickly browse through image directories, network folders and network services, accompany officials said." I am so going to buy this distro. I don't care what is in it. People ask me sometimes if a boycott of SCO customers would be appropriate. I never have given my support to anything like that. For one thing, they may be contractually stuck. Anyway, it's not nice. But to positively support companies that try to go to bat for GNU/Linux, that I am comfortable doing. Novell stood up when it counted. Others who maybe could have so far have not. David Berlind writes that it looks like SCO did buy the Brooklyn Bridge, because of an agreement between USL and Sun: "It could also turn out that a 1994 agreement between Sun and USL (very shortly after USL was acquired by Novell) holds more evidence of the same sort of IP dilution. It's just a hypothesis as this point, but it could turn out to be a powerful 'smoking gun' that influences the outcome of the various suits brought by SCO. . . . "What hasn't been discussed is whether another "sealed" document that could be equally damaging to SCO's case might exist. For example, a document that, on the basis of other contributions made to AT&T's Unix System V, gives the contributor(s) rights to the Unix IPR that are equivalent to or perhaps even more expansive than the hall pass that UC Berkeley acquired in its settlement with Novell. If such rights were awarded to yet another contributor besides UC Berkeley, then those rights could end up shattering SCO's claims. "I'm almost certain that such a contributor exists--Sun Microsystems. Although the company won't officially confirm or deny my theory, I came across some old notes in which Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, discussed the 'extremely expansive' rights to Unix that the company acquired 10 years earlier, in 1994. "Sun has declined to comment on just how expansive those rights are, but the negotiations for that license were impeccably timed with the most gut-wrenching phases of the litigation over Unix, as well as the acquisition of USL by Novell." Sun can decline to comment to a journalist, but not to an IBM or Red Hat or Novell attorney in discovery. Because they have stood up for GNU/Linux, my money will go to Novell and Red Hat and IBM. If I think of a way, I'll try to buy from AutoZone and Daimler Chrysler too. I would like Novell to please do one thing, though. I think they should credit Knoppix's creator, Klaus Knopper, for the LiveCD idea. They can benefit from the idea that he revolutionized and imitate the CD he gave to the world under the GPL, but they should, in my opinion, give him credit for such a breakthrough. And it's worth pointing out that a lone coder did it, all by himself, with no corporate funding. Just an idea and some amazing synapses. If you click on the link, you can read his message about patents. Update: I love Groklaw's brainiac readers. Even when I make a mistake, it turns out fruitful. If you want to know the true pre-Knoppix history, just take an enjoyable stroll through the comments today on this story. It seems, as always, great ideas build on previous knowledge, and Knoppix was not the first, although it was the first to achieve the compression that made it such a success. Its forebears go back to the mid-90s at least, I am informed. So, I am all wet on this one, but the combined expertise of Groklaw makes up for my lack in a most enjoyable way. Meanwhile, here's a Point/Counterpoint for you: the future, from a student at Wilcox High School, who believes that sharing knowledge leads to innovation and progress, which is what the GPL is for, by the way. And this counterview, the icky present "Who Says Standards Are Sacred?", in which the author actually defends Rambus. Now I've seen everything. Say, he isn't maybe softening us up for a Microsoft play in the future, is he? More on Microsoft and its sordid past and its troubled present, as revealed in the antitrust case in Minnesota, soon. P.S. I've been getting requests for a Novell timeline. Thanks to Henrik, we have one now. Thank you, Henrik.
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Authored by: PJ on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 04:27 AM EST |
Please record all my mistakes for posterity here, so I can find them quickly.
Thank you.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- SUSE, not Novell - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 04:59 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: reriding on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:06 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: Nathan Hand on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:07 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:24 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:38 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 06:59 AM EST
- First LiveCD - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:05 AM EST
- syanpses != synapses - Authored by: fleppir on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:29 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 09:03 AM EST
- I agree and thanks PJ - Authored by: sam on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 09:43 AM EST
- DemoLinux came long before Knoppix - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:34 AM EST
- Yggdrasil first with a LiveCD - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:23 AM EST
- SuSE LiveCD predates Knoppix - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:26 AM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: rc on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:26 PM EST
- Here's my lowly correction - Authored by: findlay on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 03:24 PM EST
- Mistakes Here Please - Authored by: daWabbit on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:26 PM EST
- Live CD - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:34 PM EST
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Authored by: grouch on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 04:28 AM EST |
Please put URLs and updates to the story here. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- URLs and Updates - Authored by: DrStupid on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:23 AM EST
- Linux cost saving and standing ovation for Lessig. - Authored by: afrikaner on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:24 AM EST
- Linux POS Terminals Grows 35% in 2003 - Authored by: afrikaner on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:28 AM EST
- David Berlind of ZDNET commenting on sco suit and BSDi, USL agreement. - Authored by: afrikaner on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:32 AM EST
- BEAUTY: The annotated SCO stock price chart - Authored by: afrikaner on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:35 AM EST
- CA in SA, Living the open source community lifestyle - Authored by: afrikaner on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:42 AM EST
- strongly OT but of interest, BBC article against EU directive - Authored by: cricketjeff on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:42 AM EST
- New Motley Fool article. - Authored by: Waterman on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:44 AM EST
- Novell to GPL YAST - Authored by: DrStupid on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:59 AM EST
- Where are TSG's software updates and security advisories? - Authored by: JeR on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:36 AM EST
- Excellent Motley Fool article - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 02:23 PM EST
- SCO Targets Federal Supercomputers - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:17 PM EST
- AP Article on MS vs World (and Linux) - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 20 2004 @ 01:59 PM EST
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Authored by: Night Flyer on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:02 AM EST |
I've always wondered...
If the operating system was on a CD, wouldn't that block most of the entry
points of viruses? All you would have are small config files on the hard drive
(plus your created works). CD-ROM drivers are so cheap, a second drive could
include Open Office and other things.
I was thinking of getting the Novell Linux that boots without an install so some
of my friends can try Linux.
I read about a lot of viruses in the news, but I haven't personally been
troubled by them. Yet, I still run a fairly tight fire wall and use text-only
for E-mails.
-----------------------------------
From all that is going on, I've decided to put my money where my mouth is. I'm
not on the 2.6 kernel yet, but when I switch, I will be "buying the
box", rather than downloading it.
We had a fairly long discussion at the last LUG meeting. Previously, one member
downloaded and burned a bunch of copies and distributed them. We haven't quite
got agreement about buying a case of retail boxes, but we talked about it. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- CD operating system - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:29 AM EST
- CD operating system - Authored by: Naive on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:53 AM EST
- CD OS - only a temp solution - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:14 AM EST
- Light Bulb idea - for Live CD distro - using OpenMCU/gnomemeeting and/or others - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:36 AM EST
- CD operating system - Authored by: lgrant on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:41 AM EST
- Viruses and worms can still enter - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:37 PM EST
- CD operating system - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 01:09 PM EST
- Old (really old) Slackware CDs - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 02:38 PM EST
- Viruses: What do you think they are? - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 03:56 PM EST
- passwords - Authored by: pyrite on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 04:12 PM EST
- Yet Another Lightbulb idea - Authored by: technoCon on Saturday, March 20 2004 @ 03:24 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:11 AM EST |
Wasnt this executed after Novell bought USL? In that case, Novell should have a
copy of the licence in their hands naturally. So no one really needs to even ask
Sun about it.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:12 AM EST |
SuSE/Novell didn't take the idea of a LiveCD.
I remember buying a LiveCD of SuSE Linux 6.x (was it 6.4?).
So I if it comes to timelines, Klaus Knopper (nice guy, BTW)
came definitley later.
Jochen
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Earlier LiveCD's - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 06:34 AM EST
- LiveCD - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 06:50 AM EST
- Yggdrasil - Authored by: chep on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:18 AM EST
- Yggdrasil Linux - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 09:03 AM EST
- Yggdrasil Linux - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:02 PM EST
- I've seen Linux bootable CD - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:58 AM EST
- LiveCD - Authored by: PJ on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:39 PM EST
- LiveCD - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 03:44 PM EST
- LiveFloppy - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:36 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:14 AM EST |
Brian Skiba is anything but neutral and unbiased. In fact it is
obvious he is very much in bed with SCO and involved
closely with SCO's media and stock promotion activities. He
turns up with Darl McBride for various SCO teleconferences
and SCO promotional events and seems to be participating in
SCO's media releases.
An indication of how closely he is ties to SCO is on SCO's
March 3rd teleconference where he is so closely tied to SCO
that he appears with Darl McBride, Robert Bench and Heise.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2004031003470588&query=skiba
some other links to Skiba:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031114180438824&query=skiba
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040314015052964&query=skiba
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Brian Skiba - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:11 AM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:19 AM EST |
I believe you may be wrong about Knoppix being the first Live CD around. I
remember that SuSE used to have Live CD's long long ago, maybe in 1999 or so.
What's particularly new on Knoppix is that the filesystem is compressed, so a
lot of tools can be had on only one CD, and, of the wonderful integration and
hardware autodetection.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Live CD's - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 06:17 AM EST
- Live CD's - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:20 AM EST
- Live CD's - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:54 AM EST
- Live CD's - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:47 AM EST
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Authored by: jamesw on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:20 AM EST |
I agree that a boycott of SCO customers is a bad idea.
It can take a long time
to move off computing platforms. Even companies that do want to do the right
thing can't do it overnight.
Few people have been seriously suggesting SCO's
Unix products for new deployments for several years. Most SCO users, therefore,
will have been on their current software for some time: in many cases, since
Xenix days.
If they're lucky, there will be a current Linux port of the
software. But even then, it's likely to be one or two versions newer, so there's
going to be some retraining involved.
If they're unlucky, they will have
customisations of their software that need to be re-done against the new
version.
If they're more unlucky, the base software will have been declared
"mature", and its owners will have decided not to pay for a Linux port. (It's
usually the testing against all the distributions the owners want to support
that makes a Linux port of commercial software expensive).
If they're
really unlucky, those modifications will be in a (proprietary?)
programming language which hasn't been ported to Linux.
And many SCO
customers will want to take the opportunity to go GUI, or switch packages to one
with a better future (or better buzzword-compliancy).
Typically, migrations
with any new programming involved take years to plan and execute, even when
you're on a single site.
These companies are victims of SCO's current
management as much as anyone else: OpenServer and UnixWare could and should have
profitably entered a long period of gentle decline as mature platforms. As
mature platforms, they would not have needed much doing to them (the occasional
driver for new "standard" hardware, perhaps), so their owners would not have
needed to spend much on development.
For the record, a subsidiary of my
company has only just turned off their OpenServer box (and there was great
rejoicing). I pushed for this to happen when the SCO news first broke, on the
purely financial grounds that SCO was not going to be around for the long term,
and was told the switch had already been planned and approved.
They are a
single site of around twenty employees with computer access. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 05:22 AM EST |
PJ wrote: I think they should credit Knoppix's creator, Klaus Knopper, for
the LiveCD idea.
I don't mean to put down Knopper's excellent work, but
I must point out that the live CD idea is older than Knoppix. (But Knoppix may
well be the best-working implementation of it).
For example, as early as
1994 (or thereabouts) you could run Yggrdrasil Linux (an early but now
discontinued distro) off the distribution CD without installing it. I think it
wasn't strictly a live CD and needed a floppy to boot, but the only reason for
this was that booting off a CD was not yet a standard feature in PC's. A
bootable CD is basically just a data CD with a boot floppy image file in a
standardized location, so Yggrdrasil could trivially have been turned into
one.
In those early days even normal CD support in Linux was tricky, because
non-standard interfaces were common, especially in cheaper drives. To handle
this, Yggrdasil had a clever feature that would allow the use of the
vendor-supplied DOS CD driver from inside Linux. I have no experience about how
well that worked, because I chose a SCSI CD drive for my PC precisely to avoid
compatibility problems.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Prototrm on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 06:45 AM EST |
According to a report on News.Com, Novell is going to release the SuSE Linux
Installer, System Repair, and Hardware/Services configuration tool, Yast, under
the GPL. IMHO, this has been an outstanding reason to use SuSE.
This is an amazing gesture on the part of Novell, and shows it really is
planning to support Open Source ideals.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:34 AM EST |
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/ed
it032.html [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:44 AM EST |
PJ: I think they should credit Knoppix's creator, Klaus Knopper, for
the LiveCD idea.
The first Linux I came across that was bootable from
CD-ROM was the Spanish language Ututo (http://www.ututo.org/ututo0.html).
This was some 6 months before I first encountered the excellent Knoppix. Ututo
was nowhere near as good as Knoppix and I'm not necessarily saying it preceded
it, but I'm pretty sure that Knoppix was new on the scene when I first came
across it. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: bruce_s on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 07:59 AM EST |
If the information in the referenced article about Sun is
correct, what did Sun pay SCOX for at the time of MS
licensing deal?
Bruce S. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: blacklight on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:04 AM EST |
IBM and HP go gangbusters with Linux. Novell comes back from the dead with
Linux. Apple reinvents and reinvigorates itself with the BSD based Mac OS X
servers, which are selling like hot cakes. The Sun is pushing hard with Linux on
the desktop (I still haven't forgotten the Scott's "Napster" comment).
Every quarter, some new supercomputer is designed from scratch that runs Linux.
Open Source will be at the centercore of a technology comeback. Life will be
good.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Captain on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:16 AM EST |
Excellent article PJ. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 08:43 AM EST |
I've always downloaded all versions of linux that I use from Redhat... Guess
what?? i'm going to buy Novel's SuSe distro. Who says companies cannot make
money through GPL??[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Len on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 09:19 AM EST |
PJ, this guy has done worse than defend Rambus.
The author of that piece,
Michael Kanellos, appeared on a WNYC radio talk show recently. As I listened, I
was amazed at his laughing carelessness with the facts. The interviewer, Brian
Lehrer, seemed like a smart guy and asked pretty good questions. He deserved
better than Kanellos, who laughed and gave answers that were often sloppy. I
wondered, How can this guy be the senior department editor at CNET News
reporting on open source? The final question led to Kanellos answering that yes,
the linux community had more than once taken down the SCO site with ddos
attacks! Outrageous. You'd think a journalist would be more interested in the
truth. Then I noticed his bio-blurb; he was trained apparently not as a
journalist but as a lawyer.
You can listen to the show from their online
archive. The show runs 2 hours (I think) and the Linux bit is in the last 20
minutes or so.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/03152004
Len
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: tcranbrook on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 09:21 AM EST |
Here is another article feeding the legal FUD aimed at
FLOSS.
Several specific things here may be of interest and might be flags
about Microsofts strategy.
Law has not quite caught up to software
intellectual property issues, said US attorney Irwin Gross. "Under existing
copyright laws, software is protected like literature. It’s treated like a
book," Gross said. The law was not made to address the copying of small snippets
of code that go into larger projects, he said.
This is a curious
statement. It sounds like a suggestion that they will attempt to apply the full
force of copyright to "small snippets" of code. This may normally be things
that 'fair use' may apply to.
Open source provides an area of risk and
uncertainty that is much higher than proprietary software. The definition of
copyright infringement in the US is not even known, Radcliffe added.
"In the
open-source arena, you sue someone and if you win you have an enormous
opportunity to collect," said Gross.
An infringing party would have to pay
damages based on all sales made through use of the code. Microsoft has an
interest in the SCO lawsuit because Microsoft, with its business model, cannot
compete against open source, he said.
They are still looking for
ways to redefine copyright liability so it passes on to the user.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: dodger on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 09:36 AM EST |
Hi PJ - you are great as always. I just wanted to make a small point that SuSE
Live CD has been around for ages. I found mention of it in my SuSE 6.2 (we are
up to 9.1) manual. This is from perhaps 1998-1999. So.... I don't really know
which way the credit should flow; Knoppix to SuSE/Novell or vice versa. I never
booted the Live SuSE CD and I have booted the Knoppix versions. I think that
Knoppix's contributions were much better marketed and came at a time when Linux
generally was up to recognizing the hardware in a meaningful way.
---
just FYI, keeping our heads above the water.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: mitphd on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:09 AM EST |
"With the share price of $11.60 the company has cash/share of
$4.70 and no meaningful debt."
At first glance, an investor
would look at that and say "If SCO were liquidated, at least the common
shareholders would get $4.70/share as their part of the cash, so the stock
shouldn't go below that price." This is, or course, what Skiba and SCO want
investors to think. Skiba is not exactly lying, but he is misleading anyone who
takes his statement at face value.
While the PIPE investors' preferred stock
is not carried as 'debt', if SCO failed it would have a priority claim on most
or all of SCO's cash, leaving little or nothing for the common stockholders. In
addition, there are massive potential liablities due to IBM from its
countersuit, which would still have to be defended if there were to be anything
left for the stockholders. As it stands, it doesn't seem likely that there
would be anthing left for the preferred stockholders, let alone the common
stockholders. As usual with Skiba and SCO, they are trying to sucker the
investor who makes decisions on 'tips', or on a cursory inspection of
manipulated financials.
Fortunately, investors are getting wise, or are at
least less impressed because no matter how hard it tried, SCO couldn't
manufacture a 'profit' last quarter (although it did hide most of its loss).
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: mdarmistead on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:15 AM EST |
I've long been a believer in downloadable ISO versions of Linux. However, since
the start of this SCO controversy I have started buying boxed versions. My most
recent purchase was Suse 9.0 Pro and I love it! My wife has always observed my
Linux use with a sceptical eye. She has always felt that linux was really only
suitable for Geekdom". After observing the install and setup, as well as
all the software and features... she want's me to replace her NT4 workstation to
Suse and OpenOffice.org.
Even though I just bought 9.0, I will be ordering 9.1 just as soon as it is
available.
Matt[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Dave Lozier on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 10:46 AM EST |
I've been using SuSE for a couple years now and 9.0 was fantastic. From what I
have gathered about the next release it's even better still. You'll enjoy using
it PJ. :)
I like the ease of use YaST provides in keeping things updated. Die hard Linux
users may scoff at this administration utility but it is one of the things that
will make it easy on users to become accustomed to Linux. On /. I just read that
Novell will be making YaST available under the GPL. This is another excellent
gesture by Novell.
All in all I can hardly stand the wait for SuSE 9.1 :D
---
~Dave[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:13 AM EST |
Slackware 3.5 came with a live CD in July of 1998. I just booted my old copy on
a new Dell and it works fine. Knoppix might be the best live CD today, but it
was not an original idea. The Slackware 3.5 Live CD even includes the X
Windowing System.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: ericl on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:30 AM EST |
...is that they're essentially salesmen, and their compensation is based on
driving banking business (in this case Deutsche Bank's potential business with
SCO). Banking deals are the overwhelming majority of a bank's revenue; there
simply is no other reason for a bank to have a sell-side analyst (versus a
buy-side analyst that actually buy the stock they recommend. You think Skiba or
Didio would actually buy SCO for their own account?). All Skiba is doing here is
to polish up SCO's impression of Deutsche Bank as a friendly partner, so as to
steer future banking business to them. The recent SEC sanctions have
attempted to reinforce the notion of a "Chinese Wall" between the banking and
securities wings of an organization, but realistically this can't happen, as
there would be no need for these people given current compensation structures.
In my estimation there are very very few (less than 5%) true sell-side firms,
i.e. that sell research to public clients--almost all of them are tied to
banking business (Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, etc). Banc (as
opposed to 'Bank') of America Securities recently settled with the SEC for
withholding information on precisely these activities (for $10 million),
destroying information relating to passing privileged information to favored
clients (Martha Stewart, anyone?). When you see a sell-side analyst, run away. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: freeio on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:35 AM EST |
For the longest time, I looked for a good alternative to the Microsoft solution.
I remember long ago reading a series of articles in Dr. Dobbs Journal about the
development of i386 based BSD, and attemped to install it using the instructions
from the articles. I never quite succeeded, and pretty soon that whole
development was headed for the courtroom for a very long timeout. So I went
further into Microsoft-based development, paying the big bucks annually for a
Microsoft Development Network subscription, and paid for all of the tools,
including third partly libraries and such. That was a very expensive journey
into frustration.
In 1999 my comapny hired a fellow from Alberta, Canada, and this young man
introduced me to gnu/linux. My first gnu/linux install was Red Hat 5.2, on a
then-obsolete system that was available to test software. There was obviously
real potential, and soon my first production gnu/linux system was based in Red
Hat 6.0. What I found amazing was that everything needed for development came
on the distrubution disk, and loaded seamlessly. The concept that the tools
were included was a new one. But the licensing amazed me even more. The GNU
GPL was a revelation all in itself - the concept of freedom to develop software
was so terribly appealing, and made real sense as compared to the EULAs that
Microsoft kept imposing and changing with each new version and service pack.
I might have stayed with Red Hat if it were not for their own increasing
foibles. There was the dropping of the boxed consumer distribution - OK, Fedora
is an interresting concept, but it is harder to get unboxed software in the door
of certain companies, and I have to do that on occasion. There was that
infernal "Blue Curve" nonsense, where KDE was corrupted to be meet
someone's odd expectations. Ugh. I despise that. Furthermore, I could not get
any recent Red Hat version for my Sun Workstations, since Red Hat dropped Sun
with version 6.2. In the end I decided that I needed to look elsewhere, and so
over time I tried a half-dozen distributions, finally settling on SuSE. SuSE
7.3 solved my problems.
Fast forward to the present. This Athlon-based system is running SuSE 8.2. My
two Athlon-based development boxes are running SuSE 9.0. Having installed it on
various other systems, I can say that it virtually always seems to detect the
hardware, and everything just works. Am I looking forward to SuSE 9.1?
Absolutely! As a developer, I appreciate having everything well integrated,
having the latest tools, and being confident that I can recommend what I use.
Since I develop free-software Qt applications, this is a very attractive
platform.
There are those who complain that you cannot just download an iso image and make
your own cdrom for SuSE. This is true, although you can do a free ftp install
if you have the bandwidth. However, I have always thought it good to support
the gnu/linux vendors who support me, and so I routinely buy the boxed kit. The
thing is that SuSE makes it attractive to do so, because it comes with real
manuals, plus both cdrom and dvd install disks. Besides, SuSE provides the
ability automate the software updates so that they "just happen" in
the background. For this kind of service, I am willing to pay their reasonable
price. I want them to stay in business, and not just because of the Novell
connection either.
Now, what to do with the old boxed set six months after it was new? Well, I
take the whole boxed set, manuals, disks, and all, to the public library. Our
head librarian knows all about gnu/linux, and the library lends the whole kit
out. Nothing goes to waste here.
---
Tux et bona et fortuna est.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: red_guy on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:35 AM EST |
It's funny.
In her previous article, Ms Holland said she would wait for the stock to hit the
$8-9 range, before she would consider giving a long buy advice. It was a mixed
bag, full of ifs and caveats.
A barrage of comments followed, of which many pointed more or less politely to
Groklaw.
Now the stock has hit that level, she has obviously considered it... and starts
using Titanic references.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: UglyGreenTroll on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:40 AM EST |
I see Melanie Hollands is a technical analyst. She may as well read goat
entrails or cast a horoscope. She does, however, actually squeeze some thinking
into her analysis in the second half of her article.
She is correct in
saying that SCO's quarterly results are moot. Their "proper" business is almost
certainly going down the toilet. SCO has bet the entire farm on licensing and
litigation. I notice, however, that SCO's quarterly report still has an entry
called "good will". Shouldn't there also be an entry called "ill will"? [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Clay on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:56 AM EST |
I think it would be interesting to create a fund of all the companies on both
sides of this battle and see how each performs as if each were a fund, ala Wired
100.
Pro Linux
---------------------------
IBM
Novell
AutoZone
Bank Of America
Dalmler Chrysler
Anti Linux
---------------------------
Microsoft
Sun
and of course....
SCOX
Please add some more, I can write a quick web application if someone knows where
I can get quotes via RSS.
should have done this months ago....
Clay
---
---------------------------
newObjectivity, Inc. supports the destruction
of all software patents.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: JustFree on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:04 PM EST |
SCO Groups shares price growth are more of like a freak snow storm in the middle
of summer. Yes, there is snow on the ground, but shortly melts away.
I still don’t understand why MS has to have a home and a professional version of
their operation system. I would never consider the home version of their
operation system. It has been very unstable in the past, and the only advantage
was the home edition supported games. So Suse 9.1 would be 29.95/79.95 versus
299.95. This is not a hard choice. Yes, there is an issue of software. Linux may
not have as many titles, but same amount of categories.
So it is possible that Sun Microsystems has rights to the UNIX copyright also.
SCO Group is now resembling a card pyramid in a light breeze.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Clay on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:08 PM EST |
This is just my personal opinion, and of course everyone has thier favorite but
from a business perspective I think MS has alot to fear from Novell.
I don't know what most people use here but I was a die hard RedHat user. For the
longest time I believed that RedHat was best position to become the Vole of Open
Source.
When I recieved the email saying that basically all desktop support was being
transitioned to fedora (none), I gave up on RedHat in disgust. They will have a
great server biz, but they will never be able to take the corporate enterprise
desktop with that perspective.
So I went down to Frys and bought SuSE professional 9, for 79 bucks because I
have read alot about Ximian creating an Exchage compatible email client.
I was *blown away*. When used in conjunction with Xover it is just as good as
windows in terms of application support, there are no problems with
applications, printers, video drivers, it all just worked. I am running Quicken,
Quick Books, Dream Weaver, photoshop. It all works.
One day later I bought $2000 in Novell stock.
Clay
---
---------------------------
newObjectivity, Inc. supports the destruction
of all software patents.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: lvteacher on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:22 PM EST |
I don't know what I enjoy more: reading Groklaw or watching the SCO stock price
go down every day.
prteacher[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: doughnuts_lover on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 12:30 PM EST |
Baystar's general partner Goldfarb comments at the end of an interesting interview done in Oct. 2003:
If you invest
in a shady management team,
you should expect bad things may
happen.
Sometimes people get what they deserve."
Well
said, man! 'Do what I say and not what I do.' Isn't it?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 01:10 PM EST |
SuSE :
I started using "Linux aktuell !" CD's around 1994.
This was basicly a Slackware distribution adopted to German Language. On the
CD's there was also
Distributionen1 : Slackware 2.1 (Original, eingedeutschte Fassung und Sourcen)
Distributionen2 : Debian 0.91
FTP-Spiegel1 : Abzug von ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux
FTP-Spiegel2 : Abzug von ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/Linux
FTP-Spiegel3 : Abzug von ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu
FTP-Spiegel4 : Abzug von ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/pub/tcl
Zusatzpaket1 : HowTos, LDP
I think from that they started to create their own SuSE Linux, still keeping
"Linux aktuell !" for a while ...
Also, these days, SuSE was located :
S.u.S.E. GmbH, Gebhardtstr. 2, 90762 Fuerth
Fuerth is located next to Nuremberg, where they are now.
Just to keep the record :-)
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 03:40 PM EST |
The majority of programmers will go with F/OSS and seek safety in numbers and
international politics from predatory corporations (which I predict will one day
include Sun, IBM, Novell, as well as MS and its smaller proxy SCO).
A small number will go with a contrarian model, using non-mainstream languages,
techniques, and obfuscation to hide their "IP" violations like using
XOR in screen drawings or hyperlinks in browsers.
The mainstream will escalate to large and larger entities, with incredible legal
and insurance armor, to fend off blatant politics, monopolies, influence
peddling, PACs, and certain 0nw3d governments.
The contrarians will get to live in the shadows and feed on dinosaur droppings
or something until an asteroid hits and the world changes.
Think "mammal" vs. "reptile" and "evolution".
Which one will Linux be? Both. Some penguins will be thunder lizards, and
others mice. The mice will win, but it will take a while. By the time they
win, they won't look much like penguins either.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: raindog on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 03:57 PM EST |
...and since we've repeatedly chided Skiba, Enderle et al. for their connections
with the involved parties....
IT Manager's Journal is an OSDN site, OSDN being the guys who own things like
linux.com, slashdot and sourceforge. There are overlapping stories between ITMJ
and Newsforge, which has previously posted a number of opinion pieces that were
pro-Linux and anti-SCO.
Yeah, you and I know it's not connected with IBM, Red Hat or Novell, and in all
likelihood ITMJ is as fierce about their journalistic integrity as CNET, ZDnet
or any of the other online tech news sites, but you and I also know that's how
the Lindonians would try to paint it if they were asked about it.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: haegarth on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 04:35 PM EST |
Neither are we ;-)
When I look around inside the German company I work for (no, it's not Daimler),
I can't help but realize that the Linux tsunami has started to speed up. Not
long ago we were a z/OS + Solaris + Windows company, where OS/2 was still used
but Linux had been banned (though some of us used it in spite of company
politics).
I had been working as an MVS systems technician since the early 90's, happily
using my OS/2 desktop, and felt quite disturbed when MS and IBM parted, and MS
started to bloat their Windows 3.1 DOS-extender to some sort of 24Bit (meaning,
somewhere in between 31 bit and 16 bit) 'OS' to an overwhelming market success.
For some years I had been watching Windows' market share grow (from the seat of
my OS/2 desktop) with disgust, seeing people that had hardly ever used an editor
before trying to get the best out of that buggy bunch of code by hacking the
'registry' for tweaks they had been presented by computer magazines, dwelling
from the bugs and flaws of Redmond's products.
Then, almost 2 years ago, my company decided to migrate our SAP R2, which
resides among the largest installations worldwide, to SAP R3, and thanks to IBM
who ported Linux to z/Linux, they didn't choose another hardware platform, but
instead kept our mainframes (yes, you might call me a dinosaur) that I had
learned to love and trust - we even beat Sun. So I went for the adventure of
switching from a z/OS (that's what MVS is called today) technician to a z/VM and
z/Linux systech. Of course, it was (and is) not easy - many new things to learn
and do, leaving a long trodded path, accepting the challenge. I'm still
learning, and it may take some more years to reach the skill level I'd like to
have with respect to both z/VM and z/Linux (which, in our case, is Suse Linux
Enterprise Server running on IBM mainframes, but once you're inside, you could
hardly distinguish it from a PC based system, it's even based on ASCII right on
our EBCDIC host hardware), but we'll see. Well, we're still migrating.
Then there was the beginning of today's SCO litigation strategy. Didn't seem to
be a problem for us, though, because we had decided to use Linux for our R3
systems only, nothing more. Our executives and our project teams at least didn't
seem to care at all. They still don't.
Many things have happened whithin the last few months, though. In the middle of
a legal 'world war' led by SCO (and maybe funded by MS) our company decided to
develop a company wide long term linux strategy, at least for our servers (many
of which had been run with Windows NT). Our desktops are still using Windows,
but each and every server we use seems to be bound for a migration to Linux
whithin the next 1,5 years (well, except for the stuff we will still be using
z/OS for), even if we might be forced to use VMWare for some Windows-only server
apps. It seems that no SCO case could prevent that. Well, maybe they even put
our executive's attention to Linux in the first place. Bad luck, guys.
Our company doesn't seem to be scared to put almost all our efforts in the Linux
operating system. and I could well imagine that our desktops might be next in
the row, maybe 2 to 3 years in the future. I sure hope so.
I must say that today it seems that I won't have to resist Redmond (with my OS/2
machines) much longer to see Windows rise and fall, at least in my company.
Whether I might abandon OS/2 some day I cannot foresee, but I'm quite sure that,
if I one day would, the choice would be absolutely clear.
Since I am one of those directly involved in our Linux movement, I can only say
that it's a breathtaking experience. It just looks like someone started the
engine some months ago and has since then been stepping on the gas - the whole
thing is getting up on speed like a rocket, with people calling us almost every
day asking for Linux / z/Linux-Systems.
And believe me: our executives are far from being Linux addicts - they simply
count their numbers, and the best numbers win. Finally they must have realized
that Linux gives them the biggest bang for the buck. For me, rather than that,
it's a matter of taste, ethics, and freedom - I have been really disturbed by
the fact that my company chose to be a large scale windows user for many years,
even though MS had been convicted of illegal monopolism in the US.
That's why I'm visiting Groklaw every day - I want to be sure that
"nothing's gonna stop us now", and Groklaw, to me, is part of that
experience, thnaks to PJ and all her contributors.
Sorry for the somewhat OT essay, but sometimes you can't keep it all to
yourself....
---
What a SCOurge that little company is...[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 19 2004 @ 11:03 PM EST |
Well HRRUMPH! I'll just go create my very own FreeBSD Live CD so as
not to feel completely left out! :-(
|-> Viva La
Groklaw!
~waynesworld~ Daemons @ the Jersey Shore[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: EdCogburn on Saturday, March 20 2004 @ 08:00 AM EST |
the icky present ... in which the author actually defends
Rambus.
If you actually read his article he's not defending Rambus,
he's simply pointing out what a lot of people suspected: The rest of the memory
chip makers are as underhanded and deceitful as Rambus is. That's why the DOJ
is allegedly investigating the whole pack of scoundrels for price-fixing right
now. Rambus is a skunk, no doubt, but its just the junior member of a whole
family of skunks. Hold your nose. :) Which just goes to show there is no such
thing as a "good" corporation; they are all capable of "going bad" if they find
themselves in an opportunistic position (I'm old enough to remember when IBM was
the "bad guy"), which is basically the point of the author's last phrase in his
article.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: SpinyNorman on Saturday, March 20 2004 @ 10:45 PM EST |
One certainly has to wonder about Sun's actions in regard to SCOG.
The
SCOSource/stock warrants deal, IMO, indicates where Sun percieves
it's
interests to lie. Last September Jonathan
Schwartz had
an article in eWeek which, from my reading of it, indicates
Sun's
ambivalence about Linux. He thinks it's great on mobile phones and
maybe on the
desktop if it's running Sun's Java Desktop System. Clearly
though, Sun has a
vested interest in the server space. This
art
icle in Federal Computer Week shows why Sun has as much to lose
as Microsoft
when they have to compete against Linux. The U.S. Courts are
replacing their
Solaris systems with Linux. Let's see Darl send them a
threatening letter :-)
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 24 2004 @ 12:13 AM EST |
Bravo,
SuSE is a wholely owned subsiderary of Novell. That said I too will purchase a
copy of 9.1. I downloaded 9.0 via a net install and thought it was brilliantly
done. What really impressed me was SuSEplugger I've been trying to get something
similar to work for a while but it didn't always work right and I had given up.
They have done a wonderful job with making a user friendly linux. Although I
will still have a machine running gentoo so I can tweek to my hearts content.
It's nice having a fully stable system to work on right out of the box![ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 11 2004 @ 02:55 PM EDT |
i want nvidia driver with openGL and dricetX new version [ Reply to This | # ]
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