DesktopLinux contributing editor Malcolm Dean examines the reemergence of Caldera under new leadership and brand name — The SCO Group. Unveiled at the GeoForum in Las Vegas, the company’s new focus positions it to make an impact on the business desktop in a big way.
Revenge of the UNIX Nerds: McBride Shoots, Will He Score?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I don’t think Caldera people are nerds.
SCO XENIX is a commercial product designed and developed by MS. Caldera tried itself in Linux market, but had no commercial success.
Because they could not come up with anything smart techically, caldera raised money on linux IPO hipe then bought DigitalResearch only to file a lawsuit against above mentioned MS.
I think they are regular sharks who just got no game. Such people usually try to beat nerds up.
Bill Gates is a sort of nerd though. Linus is probably what you call a nerd, but SCO whatever are just dumbasses.
Hope this does not offend any real nerds, the author or dumbasses.
You’re right. They aren’t nerds. Because nerds know better.
Nerds wouldn’t try to focus on a return to the Linux desktop. The Linux desktop is beating a dead horse. It simply isn’t going to happen. Red Hat admits it. Even Rasterman has admitted it. Why not focus on markets where Linux can actually succeed instead of trying to push it at a market that largely doesn’t want it?
OSNews has articles where people whine that Linux isn’t a good desktop and that we need to work to make it such, yet when a company tries to provide a good desktop experience, people whine that Linux on the desktop is a dead horse and companies like Caldera should let it die.
Go figure.
Not to be rude or anything, but if your too damn lazy or dumb to use Linux as a desktop then don’t. Is it really any more difficult than that?
“Not to be rude or anything, but if your too damn lazy or dumb to use Linux as a desktop then don’t. Is it really any more difficult than that?”
It has nothing to do with being lazy or dumb. It has to do with the fact that trying to build a commercial business on desktop Linux simply isn’t going to work because you can’t get enough marketshare to sustain yourself.
BTW, I would suggest it is more “dumb” to use Linux as a desktop then not to use it since most of the people using it on the desktop are using it for political reasons or because it makes them “cooler” than their friends that use Windows. They’d rather make a political statement and suffer with the lack of applications available I guess.
mcbride? like brian mcbride on our world cup team? what does caldera have to do with brian mcbride?
I’m glad Caldera is aiming for the desktop and I applaud them for trying (I don’t have stock on it), but creating YALD (yet another Linux distro) with the same set of issues ass all of the previous ones does little for my desktop needs. Implementing a solution that creates more problems then it solves is also going to do nothing for my desktop needs. They would probably have a greater impact if they wrote software for Linux. For some reason EVERY company wants its own Linux distribution on the market but they all seem reluctant to try an write and distribute software for it. I believe there are actually more Linux distributions that Linux applications I use. The stuff I do use seems to be perpetually stuck in mid to late beta.
“They would probably have a greater impact if they wrote software for Linux. For some reason EVERY company wants its own Linux distribution on the market but they all seem reluctant to try an write and distribute software for it.”
Probably because most Linux users aren’t willing to pay for software and as soon as a Linux vendor tries to release a commercial closed source software products, the GPL fanatics will say they sold out.
The main problem with software for Linux though is the classic chicken or the egg problem. Software vendors don’t want to write software for an operating system that has well under 1% marketshare on the desktop. But end users don’t want to use an OS on their desktop that doesn’t have software available. It’s the same problem that has killed almost all other desktop OS attempts such as BeOS.
Ease of use. Stability. Apps . For many people in business
they would still be using DOS, just because it worked for them
and they were comfortable with it. What does this say about
the intelligence of these users?? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
These people want to get a job done and with whatever app they
had running on DOS they could get the job done.
If the software companies just concentrated on fixing bugs
and allowed for improvements in hardware, I guarantee that a
whole boatload of people would still be using the incredible
simple interface that DOS allowed.
Unfortunately it is impossible to sell product if you just
fix bugs on the old version.
Point is that many busy people would love to have an interface
that never changed. Thats right. Never. A computer is supposed
to be a time saver but quite often due to the never ending
churn of hardware and operating systems, computers end up
being huge time wasters.
As for people with time on their hands, hobbyists, tinkerers;
Who cares. Let them change their GUI every month for all I care.
Personally I want to know that the time I am spending getting
familiar with an interface is going to be time well spent.
I have enough to learn without jacking around with a new interface
every six months.
-welcome back from summer vacation ;.) the arguments were getting
dull.
Linux is its own worst enemy. Communism didn’t need 3rd party interaction to fall on its face, neither will Linux. Just like many would not throw millions of dollars at farm equipment just to have it pooled and dived, many will not be willing to do the same with software. A continuing move to commercialization is the only chance Linux has at real market share. A heavily forked commercialized effort will make UNIX seem consolidated. As long as all the commercial players continue to work at being the I in team, we will all be using windows and OSX. The divided effort thing only works for the GPL/hobbyist stuff, commercial, closed source has to be a streamlined effort else face costly reproductions of the early wheel. Missed point if you ask me.
running the development of linux, nor should users allow a
‘visionary business leader’ take control of linux development and
distribution. Linux will LOSE if and only if linux tries to play
the game all commercial software giants play. Linux, for better
or worse, will only succeed if it follows the same model it is
using today.
The problem is defining success. If Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or any
of a number of ‘visionary business leaders’ were running the
show, success would be nothing short of complete and total world
domination. Their companies have such huge cost structures that
they have no choice. They have to kill off every other competitor
in order to pay the bills.
Success for a linux or BSD endeavor will be defined by a number of
dfferent factors. World domination is not on the list. At least not
on a crush and destroy world tour like microsoft.
If linux succeeds it will have to be because customers want
the freedom and choice that they get with linux. Linux just
might be its own enemy but that depends on how you define the
game. If that means no more than 5% of the market so be it.
Hopefully noone will get greedy and screw the pooch and save the
communism for political science class.
BTW, I would suggest it is more “dumb” to use Linux as a desktop then not to use it since most of the people using it on the desktop are using it for political reasons or because it makes them “cooler” than their friends that use Windows. They’d rather make a political statement and suffer with the lack of applications available I guess
I’ll be generous and assume you are an idiot and not a troll. As far as applications go there is a vastly wider range of applications available for Unix than for commercial platform likes windows. Where do you get a good Arabic word processor for windows (no word doesn’t handle right to left languages well)? Where do you get mathematical software that works well algebraic expressions over arbitrary module structures (no mathematica and maple don’t do this)? Where do you native handeling for mass Z39.50 database operations (no oracle doesn’t do this)? The fact is that commercial applications support a remarkable thin group of tasks; those tasks which can be programmed to be sold profitably. Not everyone has mainstream needs. So lets cut the nonsense about lack of applications; what the Unixes suffer from is not a lack of applications but rather specific defecits in easy to use application functionality in areas that are important to large numbers of people. That’s it; that’s the only thing that the commercial desktop OSes have on Linux.
Another common group of users are programmers. This has always been Unixes core group. Unix is an operating system designed to make development easy. Things that are simple on a Unix box are quite difficult on a PC.
Then there are people who need reliability. People who learned Unix as their first system. People who work primarily with embedded systems. People need more performance than what’s available in the PC world
Not everyone who doesn’t just need word and excel is “dumb”.
“They would probably have a greater impact if they wrote software for Linux.”
Actually, Caldera produced LIZard, the Linux Installation Wizard, if IIRC was the first X and/or framebuffer based Linux install tool. It even let you play Tetris while the packages were installing. Each major distro seems to have its own installation program, but LIZard was one of the better ones. OpenLinux actually was a decent distro, but it just wasn’t quite viable.
As for DR-DOS (now OpenDOS), it’s a great replacement for MS-DOS, and has a task manager for multitasking.
— Rob
“As far as applications go there is a vastly wider range of applications available for Unix than for commercial platform likes windows.”
There are? Hmm… Let’s see…
Can you get Photoshop for Linux? and no, don’t tell me GIMP. It’s not nearly as capable.
Can you get Acrobat for Linux?
Adobe Premier?
Adobe Pagemaker?
Quark Express?
An Access / Approach type database?
SAS?
SPSS?
Statistica?
Statistix? (By the way, that rules out all of the major statistic packages.)
Excel?
Lotus 123?
Sorry, but OpenCalc / StarCalc can’t import my scientific Lotus 123 files because it doesn’t understand the formulas.
“Where do you native handeling for mass Z39.50 database operations (no oracle doesn’t do this)?”
Now who’s being an idiot? And the average desktop user cares about mass Z39.50 database operations for what reason? Sorry, they don’t. All you do is prove my point. Linux is good for servers. It sucks on the desktop.
“Another common group of users are programmers.”
Tha average user is NOT a programmer. So once again, for the average desktop user, Linux sucks. For the programmer, they don’t need (and probably don’t want) the handholding and babying that desktop Linux distros are trying (but not succeeding) at providing.
“Not everyone who doesn’t just need word and excel is “dumb”.”
Not saying they are. There is a niche market for Linux on the desktop. But it is very small. The vast majority of desktop Linux users are using out of principle and to make a political statement. Maybe its just me, but getting so worked up over something as trivial as software licenses is dumb. Why not put that energy into something useful? Like civil rights? Or the environment?
I agree with you, but Linux gives geeks a religion to belong to. Telling a zealot that Linux is not the holly grail is like telling a deeply religious person that their religion is wrong. You could list a hundred points on why it sucks, but even if they can take only one of those points and argue it entirely out of the obvious intended context, they will do so thinking they are right and you are wrong.
“Where do you native handeling for mass Z39.50 database operations (no oracle doesn’t do this)?”
See what I mean? Who cares about all the previous valid points, Linux has native handling for mass Z39.50 database operations!!
I don’t know what is more amazing, the fact that he calls you an idiot and troll for your views, or that fact that he believes it. The human mind can and will believe anything it wants to, ignoring all seemingly obvious logic and common sense. You can’t argue with some people.
I use a typical expensive commercial program everyday on Linux and Winblows: Matlab (I use also Maple). It runs fine and better in linux with the same features and functions.It is not free but it proves that if a company WANTS make a multiplatform program or a port to linux this will be happen.
The problem with linux on desktop is that M$ forces the software-houses to not develop other ports and the inertia of users that not want a windows alternative but a free windows clone. It is the reason why linux is spreading rapidly in Europe (higher mean education than USA) and on third world (very expensive costs of M$ products, less lobby pressures).
“The problem with linux on desktop is that M$ forces the software-houses to not develop other ports.”
I see… And do you have any evidence of this nonsensical accusation? Think about what you just said for a minute:
#1: How can Microsoft do this?
#2: For the most part, software houses hate Microsoft because they are a competitor (MS Office and such). Why would they go along with this?
#3: Microsoft is known for playing musical chairs with their APIs, thus actively inhibiting software-houses from being able to develop for the latest version of Windows and giving Microsoft an advantage.
Your accusation is complete nonsense. Software vendors don’t port to Linux because it doesn’t pay to do so. It’s not cost effective for them to do a port to an OS that has less than 1% of the desktop marketshare–especially when most of the Linux users wouldn’t buy it anyway because it is closed source and not free. It’s the same reason so many vendors are dropping support for Macintosh, and why almost all vendors have dropped support for OS/2. The marketshare of the OS has dropped to the point where it simply isn’t profitable to do a port anymore.
I am not sure whether anyone here used caldera 2.2, but it was a crappy distro.
Problem was that back then libcrypt was no allowed for export, so Caldera compiled binaries that would depend on libcrypt.so, but did not include it.
So if you were trying to install pretty much any server software, installation would fail. They did not put any notice or anything like that. Just did not include module.
I worked at a shop that was building server based on 2.2 and we had commercial support, so after a two or three days we figured out what was wrong and simply got needed module off RedHat’s site, but people who were not profesionals I am sure got their share of problems.
Nothing like wasting more time but what the heck. SCO Linux will
benefit mightily from the standards used by United Linux. Thats
a good thing.
As for whether or not software licenses are trivial, I would
have to refer to my friends in Redmond WA. These people take licenses
so seriously that they started up an association to make sure
everyone on the planet understands how important software licenses
are to them. They have even brought in the police on occasion
to enforce those silly little licenses. sigh
As for apps on a popular open source operating system…
Where to start???
True: Adobe products do not run on linux(exception acrobat reader)
True: Quark Express only runs on Microsoft.
True: Spss only runs on Microsoft.
False: SAS is not available on unix or linux.
False: LaTEX cannot handle page layout publishing as well as
Adobe Pagemaker.
False: I enjoy doing this. I am a linux zealot.
False: Linux user finds it necessary to import a Lotus123 spreadsheet.
–
I mean really. This is getting boring. I cannot for the life
of me believe that the majority of linux users are just in it
to impress their geek friends or insult windows users.
>>”As far as applications go there is a vastly wider range of applications available for Unix than for commercial
>> platform likes windows.”
Now I won’t you to note the comment wider range. Everything else was an example of ranges of applications that are not supported. If I list 1000 things the average desktop user isn’t going to care about 995 of them. They are care about 5 of them. Its the range.
Now you give a whole bunch of examples of specific brand names for applications. Commercial companies are into branding so of course commercial OSes have better support for brand names.
Before I go onto brand names I noticed you didn’t address any of mine. You even skipped the arabic word processor; a population much larger than the english speaking population.
> Can you get Photoshop for Linux? and no, don’t tell me GIMP. It’s not nearly as capable.
Why does the average desktop user need high end photo manipulation? That sounds like a fairly specialized skill for people in graphic design. For the average desktop user Gimp (which is comparable to Photoshop LE) or any number of programs will work fine — as iPhoto as shown quite well. For a professional photoshop has some striking limitations in terms of speed for mass conversions. Things like TK::Photo do a very nice job with gamma conversions etc… providing and a professional user is likely to be technical enough to know photographic terminology.
In any case I’ll give Photo image manipulation along with spreadsheets and wordprocessing to the commercial vendors they do a better job supporting it.
> Can you get Acrobat for Linux?
Again not the brand name; but ghostview is vastly more powerful and things like xpdf offering simple viewing.
> Adobe Premier?
Maya
> Adobe Pagemaker? Quark Express?
Hands down TeX applications have these guys at least tied for casual users and beat for professionals. You are now getting into an area where I am a professional and there are huge problems with Quark like layout tools in terms of output for production print systems. In terms of ease of use with webpresses I’d give to the commercial vendors; for things mass document composition or automated document composition quark doesn’t cut it. There are commercial products that do but you are in the 5 figure range not the 3 figure range.
>SAS?
XWindows. Run SAS on the server why do it the PC way and download a tiny extract manipulate the extract get some data….
> SPSS?
> Statistica?
> Statistix? (By the way, that rules out all of the major statistic packages.)
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/
> Excel?. Lotus 123?
Reread my post I addressed this one specifically.
> “Where do you native handeling for mass Z39.50 database operations (no oracle doesn’t do this)?”
> Now who’s being an idiot? And the average desktop user cares about mass Z39.50 database operations for what
> reason?
Because they work in a library or a bookstore and are trying to find a book for a customer based on vague criteria.
> > “Another common group of users are programmers.”
> Tha average user is NOT a programmer. So once again, for the average desktop user, Linux sucks. For the programmer,
> they don’t need (and probably don’t want) the handholding and babying that desktop Linux distros are trying (but not
> succeeding) at providing.
Reread your post; you contradicting yourself.
> > “Not everyone who doesn’t just need word and excel is “dumb”.”
> Not saying they are.
Actually you did. Reread your post.
“False: LaTEX cannot handle page layout publishing as well as Adobe Pagemaker.”
Great idea! Lets force everyone to learn LaTEX macros! That way our productivity can drop to near 0 for the next few months!
BTW, ever tried to get a LaTEX document printed by your typical small publishing house? Newsletters, etc.? Most of them will say “What the hell is this?” As a general rule, only large publishing houses that are doing major runs of books and such support LaTEX. Hell, even most book publishers won’t accept LaTEX (this coming from a published author who has actually asked about it).
“False: Linux user finds it necessary to import a Lotus123 spreadsheet.”
True: The average desktop user in a business or scientific setting DOES need to work with spreadsheets that often contain complex formulas and equations that OpenCalc can’t understand. I’ve tried importing my spreadsheets into OpenCalc. No dice. It doesn’t understand a lot of the formulas. BTW, It has the same problems with complex Excel spreadsheets.
“Now I won’t you to note the comment wider range.”
So what? Who cares? 99% of these applications are worthless to the average desktop user. And of the ones that are useful to the average desktop user, probably 80% of those are poorly done clones of commercial applications, or applications that can only serve the most basic needs.
“You even skipped the arabic word processor; a population much larger than the english speaking population.”
Sorry. Not true. Most countries teach english as a second language in secondary education because it is such an international trade language. English is the standard language for most forms of international business.
“In any case I’ll give Photo image manipulation along with spreadsheets and wordprocessing to the commercial vendors they do a better job supporting it.”
That’s my point. Writing letters, keeping track of finances, and doctoring photos to coverup horrible photography skills are probably the most common uses of desktop systems outside of surfing the Web and doing email. You yourself, just admitted that the commercial vendors do this better. Unfortunately, most of the commercial vendors don’t have Linux ports of their software, so once again, Linux doesn’t work well for the average desktop user.
“XWindows. Run SAS on the server why do it the PC way and download a tiny extract manipulate the extract get some data….”
This makes no sense if I am a desktop user. All it does is add more screwing around and more complexity. Besides, what is your point? There’s no Linux port of SAS. So how do XWindows and servers have anything to do with this?
“http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/“
The only reasonably capable statistics software available here is R. And R isn’t even a statistics package. It’s a programming language for doing statistics. Now we can make people learn a programming language first. That sounds like a great productivity booster.
“Because they work in a library or a bookstore and are trying to find a book for a customer based on vague criteria.”
#1: This isn’t the typical desktop user.
#2: This is a database server application. So it’s irrelevant. Even if they did need this capability, most likely situation is a UNIX database server with a GUI client running on Windows based workstations.
“Reread your post; you contradicting yourself.”
I’m not contradicting myself. Average user is not a programmer. Average programmer doesn’t need or want handholding and babying. So either way, there is no market for desktop Linux distros. The average user doesn’t want it. Neither does the average programmer.
“Hands down TeX applications have these guys at least tied for casual users and beat for professionals.”
Oh really? So we make people learn TeX and LaTeX macros? That will reduce productivity to near 0 for several months. Or are you suggesting LyX or KLyx? Been there, done that. Both of them suck.
And like I said in my last post, most small publishing houses can’t work with TeX documents anyway.
“Again not the brand name; but ghostview is vastly more powerful and things like xpdf offering simple viewing.”
Umm… Ghostview can’t write a pdf file. I was not refering to the reader here (which actually is available for Linux anyway). I was refering to the full Acrobat product.
“Actually you did. Reread your post.”
No… I didn’t… There is a difference between “most” and “everyone”. I said “most”.
“SCO XENIX is a commercial product designed and developed by MS.”
Wrong. Microsoft bought Xenix just like they did DOS. They could not understand it so they contracted with SCO to support it for them. Eventually, SCO assumed ownership. In the transfer of ownership, Microsoft agreed to not develop a Unix-like operating system (not that they could). They desperately needed a way to take advantage of the 32-bit chips available, so they split the sheets with IBM while stealing vast portions of OS/2 code when they discovered they could hire away David Cutler and some of his VMS Development team from DIGITAL, who then proceeded to turn it into NT.
“Caldera tried itself in Linux market, but had no commercial success.”
Wrong. Caldera was second to the commercial Linux table, following Red Hat. They have success in enterprise and embedded markets. Their method of stealth marketing Ransom Love brought from Novell has failed to draw much attention to the brand, however. Caldera had a product called Wabi which ran 16bit Windows programs well in Linux around 1997. About that same time vast improvements in ease of installation of Linux were made by Caldera.
“Because they could not come up with anything smart techically, caldera raised money on linux IPO hipe then bought DigitalResearch only to file a lawsuit against above mentioned MS.”
Insanely wrong. Novell bought Unix (which was later sold to SCO) around the same time they bought DR-DOS from Digital Research. It is quite a bit more advanced than any DOS Microsoft owns. Ransom Love took ownership of DR-DOS with him when he left Novell and formed Caldera (many years before the IPO). DR-DOS was a major player in embedded markets until Caldera developed Lineo as it’s replacement. The lawsuit filed against Microsoft was due to Windows 3.0 betas being able to detect when the program was running on DR-DOS and then fail. The released Windows product did run on DR-DOS however, but due to now legendary Microsoft underhandedness, consumers were afraid to buy DR-DOS. Caldera later demonstrated to the court Windows 95 running on top of DR-DOS. This was when Microsoft was swearing DOS was gone from Windows, in contrast to Bill Gates’ recent comments that it was a “millimeter under the surface”.