LinuxQuestions.org Turns Six

June 29, 2006 1 Comment

As a just announced in the forums, LQ recently turned six. The site continues to grow at an astounding rate. It's not just the 2,311,325 posts and 254,019 registered members either. LQ ISO is just about to hit 2,000,000 downloads and we have almost 3,000 articles in the LQ Wiki. That not what's remarkable to me though. What is remarkable, is that despite our long term rapid growth, we've managed to stay both true to our roots and extremely friendly to the Linux Newbie. True, your post may scroll off the main forum page quicker that it used to, but the site still has much of the feel it did five years ago. That is something I'm truly proud of.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Marvell Buys Intel's Handheld Processor Unit

June 28, 2006 Leave a comment

Looks like Intel has divested its “communications and application processor units” to Marvell Technology for $600 million. Intel had invested significant amounts of cash into some of these units and the PXA Xscale-based line was particularly popular in Linux-based products. They also powered the latest Treo and Blackberry. The processors failed to generate the market share Intel had hoped for though. With nearly a billion cellphone due to ship next year and countless billions in investments already sunk into the projects, Intel finally decided to pull out of the market (which TI dominates with 69% of the market). I guess Apple isn't going to get that one stop shop I had speculated about a while back. What may be worse for Intel though, is that their little foray into this market may have taken their eye off the ball just long enough for AMD to gain the ground they have been vying for in Intel's core market for ages. Luckily for Intel, they have a cash cow to fall back on.
–jeremy
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Novell Names Ron Hovsepian To Succeed Jack Messman as CEO

June 22, 2006 Leave a comment

Continuing the recent rash of high level departures, Jack Messman has been ousted by the Novell board. Taking his place is long time IBM'er Ron Hovsepian. The market reacted well to the news, with NOVL up over 10% on the press release (although still down sharply for the year). I think it's clear that Messman just wasn't the right guy to turn Novell around. He didn't seem to understand their Linux/OSS strategy very well and the company was subject to a fair amount of internal strife (with multiple high profile departures, including the Suse founder) and a lack of overall vision and direction. The prospects seem to be better for Hovsepian from what I've read, which should be encouraging for Novell. He had the following to say:
“Going forward, we will maintain a sharp focus on meeting customer demand and delivering value through Linux-based, enterprise-wide solutions and identity and resource management products. We have innovative technology, a strong roster of customers and business partners and an extremely talented group of employees. I look forward to continuing to work closely with our business partners and customers.”
They have some nice products, but have failed to gain real traction compared to Red Hat. They seem to want to focus more on the Linux desktop, while Red Hat has all but abandoned that in favor of the enterprise server market. Which will work out better in the long term is unclear at this point. The Linux market, however, is eager to have two solid performers to avoid the pitfalls that became clear with the Microsoft monopoly. How much time remains for Novell before someone else steps up as the clear number two remains to be seen.
–jeremy
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The Microsoft Exec Exodus

June 21, 2006 1 Comment

On a topic I've covered multiple times recently, more execs are stepping down from Microsoft. Both Martin Taylor and Ted Hase are already gone, in fact. From the respective articles:
Microsoft did not give details on why Martin Taylor left the world's biggest software maker after the 13-year company veteran was appointed in March to lead marketing efforts for Windows Live.
“After 16 exciting, interesting years in one place challenging conventional thinking, introducing fresh approaches, creating new businesses opportunities, and managing, leading and being influenced by some of the brightest minds in the industry I've decided that it's time for a change,” Hase said.
As you can see, both have been with the company well over a decade. Both of them seem to have come to recent hasty decisions or were pushed out. Cringely has some interesting ideas on what we'll see in the coming months. I agree with a lot of what he says, and I came to the same conclusion – Ballmer has to go. He takes that assessment further though and says “several dozen of his (Gates) closest and oldest associates” must also leave for this to be done correctly. The “Microsoft Way” must fundamentally shift in a major way, which in essence means a regime change at this point. Shift away from what you ask? I think this recent comment from Bill is telling:
When they invented radial tires, they should have shot the guy,” he said. “The whole industry went through a crisis, because it took nine years to squeeze out the extra factory capacity, because the tires lasted longer.”
That's what Microsoft has thought of innovation recently. Anything that cuts into sales, even if it saves lives is bad. I hope you're no longer wondering why Microsoft doesn't innovate. Whether they can pull a fundamental paradigm change off in a company the size of Microsoft remains to be seen, but a lot of longtime Microsofties will have to go in the process for them to have any change at all. This one could get ugly.
–jeremy
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Why Oracle Isn't a Member of the OSDL

June 21, 2006 Leave a comment

In an interview with InternetNews Wim Coekaerts, who is the Director of Linux Engineering at Oracle, goes into some details on how Oracle is utilizing Linux. It's fantastic to see that “almost half of Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 shipments were on Linux in the first three months of 2006”. I knew that Oracle penetration on Linux was really gaining traction, but almost half is extremely impressive. When the topic of the OSDL came up, Wim has this to say:
Let's just say that one part of the OSDL is trying to represent businesses to the Linux community. I know that a number of the members aren't heavily involved in Linux but still are members.
We basically know where to go. We have a good relationship directly with people in the Linux community. We have all our partners. So there is no immediate advantage to being a member for us. Not to sound arrogant, but we know how to deal with the Linux community.
The thing that was really kind of revolting is that OSDL goes out and basically says that they represent the Linux community while there is no direct feedback line back to the community.
Now, it's true that a number of the members aren't heavily directly involved in Linux but still are members. Beyond that though you have to remember that for Oracle, Open Source is not core. One of the main points of OSDL is to share R&D costs and Oracle certainly doesn't want to do that. I'd have thought “Why isn't MySQL AB not in OSDL” would come up before Oracle. His last comment, however, is the one I felt was poignant here. The OSDL really seems to be taking a beating on this point lately. I've not seen a ton actually change though. Greg KH seems hopeful now that some of the things that were proposed will be adopted, which is encouraging. I had offered (both personally and on behalf of LQ) to help the OSDL with their community efforts not too long ago. While some people from within OSDL did contact me and some useful discussion took place, nothing ever came of it. The offer, of course, still stands…but I still don't have a clear picture of exactly what we could do.
–jeremy
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Mundie Speaks on OSS

June 19, 2006 Leave a comment

Craig Mundie, who was recently made chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, was interviewed by eWeek and commented on the GPL. His response to the question about interoperability with Open Source (and specifically the GPL):
I have been one of the principle people architecting the way we are going to step up to this bigger question around interoperability, and that will certainly be a focus of mine going forward, along with Bob Muglia.
Let's not forget though, Mundie in the not too distant past was the Microsoft “anti-open-source poster child“. In fact, the Perens open letter that was signed by everyone from Stallman to O'Reilly, was addressed to Mundie. Has he done a mental 360 or is this just lip service? As I've mentioned in the past, words mean very little at this point and we need to see some action, and some significant action at that. Complying with the EU anti-trust case would be a start, but you don't get many points for simply following the stipulations of a lawsuit. With the history that Microsoft has, the olive branch they need to extend has to be almost tree-sized at this point. Let's stop the words and get to the actions, we're all waiting to see what happens.
–jeremy
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Can Windows and Open Source Learn to Play Nice?

June 15, 2006 Leave a comment

Bob Muglia, the senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business, talked about just that question with eWeek at the recent TechEd conference (where I am told there was at least one LQ shirt on the floor ;) One quote that stuck out to me was:
A commercial company has to build intellectual property, while the GPL, by its very nature, does not allow intellectual property to be built, making the two approaches fundamentally incompatible, Muglia said.
That's one problem with Microsoft. A commercial company should have to build value. Someone should tell Red Hat, MySQL AB and the other myriad commercial companies making money with GPL software that it's not allowed. Aside from that, he did have some good things to say. One problem here is that Microsoft is going to have to take the first step here, and it's going to have to be a large step. The company has a sordid history of business partnerships being completely predatory and interoperability meaning “embrace and extend”. I think what we may be seeing here is Microsoft reaching the acceptance stage. They've ignored, they've laughed, they've fought, and now they are realizing that this is for real and while they still have the dominant position in many places now, things are demonstrably changing. As I wondered in my last post though, I'm not sure Microsoft is yet ready to change alongside us.
This seems to have been a popular topic at Tech Ed, with Jeremy Moskowitz calling for a truce between Windows and Linux. I don't see much of a war going on, and if there is Microsoft is the only one fighting it from what I can tell. Linux and Open Source develop to Open Standards that are available to anyone. By doing that, interoperability is a non-issue. Anyone who develops to the standard is inherently able to work with anyone else who develops to the standard. The fact that Microsoft does not develop to many standards doesn't make a war. On a funny note, he also says:
Windows has more patches, but Microsoft releases them more frequently and fixes things more quickly,”
The fact that he thinks a company that has a specific day to release patches (Tuesday) releases things quicker than anyone is amusing to me. Looking at the average response time from report to patch for Linux vs. Windows and I think you'll find the ascertation by Mr. Moskowitz quite misguided.
A note to Microsoft, you can join the party anytime. But that means joining the party. No predatory practices, no anti-competitive behavior and no monopoly abuse. Open Standards is the way for Open Source and proprietary software to interact. Clean documented interfaces and API's mean the license of two interacting programs don't even come into play. The truth will set you free :)
–jeremy
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Broken Windows Theory

June 15, 2006 Leave a comment

An interesting post from a former members of the Windows team on why he thinks Vista slipped. It's clear at this point that Vista is complicated… almost certainly more complicated than it needs to be. An architectural diagram of Windows would suggest there are more than 50 dependency layers (never mind that there also exist circular dependencies). Circular dependencies?? While Microsoft may not like UNIX, it's clear they need to understand the “UNIX way”. It's what allows a decentralized and largely uncoordinated team of disparate developers to come together and write something like the Linux kernel. A modular and logical separation of functionality brought together by standard interfaces. Windows on the other hand seems to be a jumbled mess that requires all developers to understand far too much of the puzzle. It's also telling to see just how out of control the management scheme seems to be at Microsoft. I'd guess we'll see it change drastically after Vista actually ships, but by then it may be too late. Microsoft is losing a lot of ground here. Linux is steadily gaining both ground and mind share while OS X continues to deliver features that were cut from Vista long ago. Meanwhile, Google is looming from the other direction. And that's just the beginning. The lack of innovation is finally catching up to Microsoft. They are having an extremely tough time replacing the talent they lost during the bubble and it's showing. They're playing catchup in almost every place they compete. With even their proprietary formats, one of the tried and true forms of lockin, under fire things are looking shaky at best. Don't be too worried though – with $50 billion in the bank and an entrenched install base, Microsoft isn't going away any time soon. I think it's clear though that the king-fu death grip they've hand on the industry has loosened and will never be regained. Where exactly the company goes from here is the interesting question to me. I still wonder if they can fully grasp the potential that still remains with the current leadership in place.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

Native Port of Google Earth Comes to Linux

June 14, 2006 Leave a comment

When I saw that a native port of Google Earth would be coming soon, I didn't think it would be that soon. With the help of icculus, Google has ported Earth to Linux using Qt and OpenGL. I've had a chance to download it onto a couple machine and for the most part, things seem to work OK. For the first native port ever, things look quite smooth (I'm sure icculus helped substantially). Here's hoping that the response on this port is positive enough to warrant more native ports. It's a great first step I think and an indicator of the progress Linux is making. One thing to note: at least for me, Google Earth seemed to crash almost immediately on any machine with an nVidia driver installed. After a little poking around, it seems like it doesn't like the libGL that comes with the driver (libGL.so.1.0.8762 for me). Pointing to the system version solved the problem immediately. You can do so with LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 ./googleearth. Enjoy!
–jeremy
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Reliability Survey: Windows Servers Beat Linux Boxes

June 7, 2006 Leave a comment

Well, we haven't seen one of these reports in a while. From the article:
Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime.
20 percent more annual uptime?!?!? What math was used to come to that conclusion? Well, they don't say…but it seems like a hefty number to me. Also from the article:
The Yankee Group made a point of stressing that the survey was not sponsored or supported by any server OS maker.
But, guess who did the survey? Laura DiDio. That's right – the same Laura DiDio that said SCO had a good case and the same Laura DiDio that – well, insert clearly biased claim here. The ascertation that this survey was unbias because it was “not sponsored or supported by any server OS maker” goes right out the Window when you see a name with that kind of track record behind it. I can't find the entire results of the survey and the linked article is quite lacking when it comes to details, but I'd guess it's like the last one they did, where each shop had to be running both operating systems to be part of the survey. When you get a bunch of Linux boxes setup by MCSE's it's no wonder why things came out like they did. The completely hilarious thing about this is that the Yankee Group has absolutely no business even talking about uptime when they can't keep their own web server up for more than 20 days. It incidentally runs Windows 2000.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

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