Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 30th Jun 2008 23:55 UTC, submitted by sjvn
In what seems like a battle of ants in a case full of lions, Practical Technology has learned that Xandros has bought Linspire. "In an announcement that was sent out today, June 30, to Linspire stockholders, CEO Larry Kettler wrote that the stockholders had decided to sell all of Linspire's assets. This deal specifically includes Linspire, Freespire, and the company's distribution agnostic CNR (Click 'N Run) desktop installation platform." Not everyone is very happy with this one, though.
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RE[3]: I think it's great
by Windows Sucks on Tue 1st Jul 2008 19:41
in reply to "RE[2]: I think it's great"
Member since:2005-11-10
I am actually more of an Apple guy then a Linux guy. But when I update I mean service packs etc. As Ubuntu is now doing with LTS, Apple just did this week and Red Hat did a couple of months ago.
And yes there are bugs in LTS but they are putting out a point release just like Apple and Red hat did to address some of those bugs.
There are tons of bugs in Xandros business edition but they have not addressed them at all. Read through their fourms and people fuss all the time about this.
And when was the last time Linspire updated anything. When 6.0 came out? Xandros last put out an OS update of ANY sort in 2006.
Stability is what I want. Stability does not only mean you don't update or change, but it also means you fix problems.
For instance Red Hat RHEL 5.0 came out March 14 7007, 5.1 came out November 7 2007. 8 months. 5.2 came out May 21 2008, a little more then 6 months after 5.1. This is what I mean by updates. Regular maintainance releases to fix problems and sometimes add features.
Not major releases but updates.
RE[4]: I think it's great
by JeffS on Tue 1st Jul 2008 22:31
in reply to "RE[3]: I think it's great"
Member since:2005-07-12
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.More News »
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2005-07-12
All good points, but let me address some of them.
"If you are a real supporter of Xandros then you would know that they don't update their offerings very often."
I'm not a "supporter" of Xandros. In fact, I've never used it. I have read some good reveiws of it, and have read that their Windows networking and Active Directory support are excellent.
As for updating offerings, I think that you are probably in the Ubuntu/Fedora mindset, where latest and greatest goodies are features in lue of stability.
That's great for the Linux enthusiast crowd (me included), but is sucks for businesses, regular users, and OEMs. For them, stability is paramount.
That's one of the reasons for Red Hat's huge success. They update every 1-1/2 to 2 years (RHEL), and thus feature "older" versions of stuff. But OEMs, ISVs, and enterprises can count on it. These people avoid Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, etc, like the plague.
"1. They changed from Debian to Ubuntu but not Ubuntu LTS. Now Linspire is going to always be behind as it is now. Still on 7.04 as the base. At least with LTS they would have Ubuntu long term support and updates and could of rolled with that till the next LTS."
I agree with you here. I think it's better to be based on Debian Stable, with backports. Ubuntu is proving too buggy, even with the LTS release.
"2. Making Freespire. Making a free version of something people were paying for??? Now who is gonna pay for it. And being the Freespire is almost as stable, you offer paid support for it and it's more up to date?? That was the end of buying Linspire for me."
Agreed that this killed off people buying the boxed version of Linspire. But that was only a tiny piece of Linspire's revenue. Most of their revenue came from OEM contracts and CNR. Releasing Freespire was probably an attempt to get more community enthusiasm, and mindshare. And selling boxed versions of Linspire to Linux enthusiasts like you and me was never a good business strategy. We get our Linux for free, and don't really need the extra's that come with a boxed set. From a business perspective, emphasizing on OEM contracts and CNR revenue made sense.
"3. Opening CNR. CNR was the only thing of value Linspire had that made it unique. Once they opened it there is no reason to buy Linspire. And they put it on Freespire for free. Double reason not to buy Linspire."
I kinda agree here, but it still remains to be seen. Opening up CNR was Carmony's baby, and I think he was merely trying to expand the market for CNR. But then Carmony left, and the new management don't seem to be fully following through on the strategy. So it remains to be seen whether that was a good or bad move.