[SMAUG] Caldera Workstation 3.1

[Ronald Joe Record]

Ok, so your direct experience with OpenLinux 3.1 is pretty much hearsay.
My intention and desire is to assist Calvin and other Linux users in any
way i can. I do not wish to get involved in a religious or ethical debate
on the value or licensing of proprietary software.

I believe your opinions are unfounded but must admit that this type of
opinion seems to be widely held within the Linux community.

Let me just make a few points and if people want to they can carry on
a discussion or just ignore these comments. First, i am aware of only
one vendor whose Linux distribution does not contain proprietary software.
That is the not-for-profit Debian distribution. All of the other vendors 
include packages like Netscape Communicator or Adobe plugins. Most include 
packages like StarOffice and high-end proprietary development tools.
OpenLinux 3.1 includes Borland's Jbuilder Foundation and Sun Microsystems' 
Forte Java development environments. As the open source development model 
pushes higher and higher up the vertical solution stacks it will become more 
and more feasible to put together an entirely "free as in speech" distribution. 
If you are a commercial Linux vendor and people want and will pay money for these 
high-end tools and environments, then why not ?

As for the criticism than Caldera takes and doesn't give, well, i just think
this is pretty hypocritical. Almost every person who has levelled this sort
of criticism isn't a very active contributor to any major open source project.
If you were on, say, the Linux kernel mailing list or the KDE developers list
you would have been aware of the extent to which Caldera engineering has been
involved in these two projects. Much of the IA64 Linux work has been done by
Caldera employees. Caldera led the LSB effort. Check out www.openlinux.org for
open source projects on COAS and Lizard (the first graphical installation for Linux).

I would prefer to spend my arguing time and effort on accurate comparisons of
Microsoft Windows and Linux or UNIX. The Linux community seems to have a penchant
for attacking itself while Microsoft just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Finally, Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 is targeted at businesses and professional developers.
Hobbyists, students, individuals just checking it out and such may in fact be better
served by one of the Linux distributions tailored for that type of user. If you do
want to check out OpenLinux 3.1 for free, the ISO images are available at
http://www.caldera.com/download/

-rr-

re:

Raphael Dorado wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 07 August 2001 09:57 am, you wrote:
>   #  Calvin,
>   #
>   #  In addition to the suggestions i included in my last post
>   #  (which was sent from my new e-mail address so the list moderator
>   #  must approve it), the following suggestion may prove helpful:
>   #
>   #    "...try and use the tab key to get to the next screen.
>   #     The "tab between fields" is the same as it is in Windows.
>   #     It may just not be detecting his mouse and he just needs to
>   #     get to the next screen to select it manually"
>   #
>   #  Raphael,
>   #
>   #  Perhaps you wouldn't mind relating your experiences with OpenLinux 3.1
>   #  and provide some/any technical details as to why you so discourage its
>   #  use ?
>   #  Although i certainly appreciate and admire the quality of several distributions
>   #  (Mandrake and SuSE in particular), i find Caldera's OpenLinux 3.1 to be by far
>   #  the most stable Linux 2.4 and LSB oriented development environment. Further,
>   #  inclusion of KDE, StarOffice and many other applications makes it an easy
>   #  transition for the Windows user. I've also included GNOME, AbiWord, xlHtml
>   #  and about 500 well-integrated RPMS on the Open Source Supplement CD.
> 
> Ronald,
> 
> Caldera has released a Linux distribution with proprietary software whose source
> code is not available. This is what I call "non-free" software (as in speech).
> This forces people to get support from Caldera and pay for it, in opposition
> with the other major distributions for which support is available from the other
> members of the community. Caldera is going against the Linux philosophy.
> That's why I mentioned that support for Caldera from this forum would be
> difficult to get, most of the Linux savvy people belonging to the group would
> not install Caldera because they would have to pay for support if they can not
> get something going on. That's what I meant by "descent", descent in regard
> to the Linux philosophy where private users should get a workstation operating
> system with support from the user base.
> 
> The Linux community (in general) has a grief against Caldera because its
> behavior is to take and not give. In comparison RedHat, Mandrake, Suse add
> extra value to Linux adding drivers, internationalization and ports to new
> platforms. When was the last time Caldera did something useful for user
> lambda ?
> 
> I have no doubt that Caldera OpenLinux is one of the best Window$ to Linux
> transition distribution. The only experience I had with Caldera linux was a demo
> made at PCUSC (PC users of Santa Cruz) by a teenager whose parent(s) work
> for SCO. It was probably a 2.x release, but I was very disappointed by the (non)
> hardware detection.
> 
> My opinion is that you need end user acceptance for a Linux distribution. When
> accomplished, the distributor can then make money on services linked to the
> deployment of their distribution in companies where real expertise is needed.
> 
> --Raf
> 
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-- 
Ronald Joe Record, Open Source Architect, Caldera Systems
E-mail: rr@caldera.com   Voice:  831-427-7604   FAX:  831-427-5417
USPS:   400 Encinal Street, Santa Cruz, California 95061
WWW:    http://ronrecord.com