August 6, 2007
by sjvn01
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Lenovo to offer SUSE Linux Preload on ThinkPad Notebooks

Dell and Ubuntu broke the barrier for major vendors to preload consumer desktop Linux, and now Lenovo and Novell have shattered the wall for Linux-powered business desktops. On Aug. 6 at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, the companies announced an agreement to provide preloaded SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP 1 on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops with Lenovo also providing Linux support.

The companies will offer SLED 10 SP1 to commercial customers on Lenovo’s popular ThinkPad T Series, a class of notebooks aimed at typical business users, beginning in the fourth quarter of 2007. The ThinkPad notebooks with the Linux-preload will also be available for purchase by individual customers.

While Lenovo has offered SLED before on ThinkPads, its offerings have been very limited. In 2006, after going back and forth on desktop Linux Lenovo finally released its high-end T60p ThinkPad with SLED. This turned out to be a limited release, which left the user to load SLED on the system and to seek support from Novell.

In July, Lenovo appeared to be set to continue this limited Linux desktop support with the release of the T60p’s successor, the T61p. Things have changed. For the first time, Lenovo will provide direct support for both the hardware and operating system. Novell will provide maintenance updates for the operating system directly to ThinkPad notebook customers.

The two companies have a history of joint research and development spanning more than five years. For several years Lenovo has Linux-certified its ThinkPad notebook PC line and provided customers with the necessary tools to optimize the Linux experience on a ThinkPad notebook. Lenovo will continue to offer Help Center support for SLED10 that started with the ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation notebook.

“We have seen more customers utilizing and requesting open source notebook solutions in education, government and the enterprise since our ThinkPad T60p Linux announcement, and today’s announcement expands upon our efforts by offering customers more Linux options,” said Sam Dusi, Lenovo Notebook product marketing manager, in a statement. “Known for hardware- and software-based innovations like our roll cage and ThinkVantage Technologies, we continue our tradition of building the industry’s best-engineered PCs and delivering excellent customer solutions, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 from Novell.”

Roger Levy, Novell’s vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions, said in a statement, “We are extremely pleased to partner with Lenovo in delivering this pioneering Linux preload to the enterprise client
computing market. Pairing Lenovo’s quality and innovation with the stability, flexibility and security advantages of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 operating system gives enterprise customers the fully certified and supported Linux-based solution they have been seeking.”

The companies claim that the ThinkPad Notebooks and SUSE Linux Enterprise Leading Business Technology Notebooks in the ThinkPad T Series feature the latest technologies along with Lenovo’s newest innovations, such as a Top Cover Roll Cage for extreme durability, ultra-fast wireless connectivity with Ultra Connect II and maximum battery life along with the Battery Stretch tool. Customers also benefit from the business applications delivered in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, including the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, which includes Microsoft Office file compatibility; the Evolution e-mail client; and Firefox Web browser.

ThinkPad notebook PCs running Linux will be on display at Novell’s booth at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo from Aug. 6-9.

August 5, 2007
by sjvn01
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Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony resigns

In an interview today, controversial Linux leader Kevin Carmony confirmed rumors that he had resigned as CEO of desktop Linux vendor Linspire on July 31. Carmony said he plans to work on several of his own business projects, and on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Carmony said that, after six years at Linspire, it was time to move on. Projects he plans to work on include continuing as Chairman of the Board of Sadie’s, a nationwide children’s photography studio chain, and serving as CEO of Dating DNA, an online dating service based on social networks. In addition, Carmony will be working more on Mitt Romney’s campaign to become the Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency in 2008.

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August 3, 2007
by sjvn01
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Red Hat Global Desktop delayed

Red Hat confirmed on Aug. 3 that it would be delaying the release of the newest member of its desktop Linux family, Red Hat Global Desktop, because the company is seeking to provide certain multimedia codecs. Sources close to Red Hat said obtaining some of these codecs was dependent on Red Hat coming to an agreement with Microsoft.

In Red Hat’s official statement, company spokesperson Leigh Cantrell Day said, “We have finished the development phase of producing Global Desktop and are now polishing it up and testing it. We initially were trying to bring Global Desktop to market by August, but decided to delay until September. To improve the user experience, we have been looking at how we can provide legal versions of the most popular multimedia codecs needed to listen and view the majority of the content on the internet. We are wrapping those negotiations up and hope to deliver those codecs with Global Desktop when we launch in September.”

Sources close to the Linux distributor said Red Hat was seeking to conclude negotiations with Microsoft for access to its popular WMF (Windows Media Format) codecs. These codecs have been included in other Microsoft deals with Linux vendors including its partnerships with Linspire, Turbolinux and Xandros.

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August 1, 2007
by sjvn01
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Developers free to work on open-source Atheros Wi-Fi

While Linux desktop users have long been able to use Wi-Fi cards based on Atheros chip sets, they haven’t been able to do so without using proprietary Atheros code. Now, the Software Freedom Law Center has given the green light to developers working on an open-source substitution for the closed-source code.

The technology in question, OpenHAL, enables users with wireless cards based on technology from Atheros Communications to connect to networks using exclusively free and open-source software.

OpenHAL is low-level interface software for Atheros 802.11 Wi-Fi cards. Without OpenHAL, Linux-based systems need a proprietary HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) plus a wrapper driver to use these wireless cards. Thus, OpenHAL is an open-source replacement for Atheros’ proprietary HAL.

OpenHAL was initially based on the ar5k driver, which was used as the basis for a proprietary HAL replacement for the OpenBSD operating system. Support for Atheros cards is especially important for desktop Linux, since Atheros wireless chip sets are commonly used by dozens of Wi-Fi vendors such as 3Com, D-Link and Netgear, as well as many laptop manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Toshiba.

The developers of OpenHAL faced allegations that their project might include material that infringed Atheros’ HAL copyright. The programmers then asked the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) to investigate these rumors.

The SFLC agreed to help on a pro-bono basis, and subsequently conducted a confidential audit that carefully compared OpenHAL to Atheros’ proprietary HAL code.

After performing the audit, SFLC concluded that OpenHAL does not infringe copyrights held by Atheros. As a result, OpenHAL development can now continue safely, so long as the OpenHAL developers continue their work in isolation from Atheros’ proprietary code, it said.

“The OpenHAL developers can now continue development with legal clarity,” said Karen Sandler, an SFLC attorney. “We thank Atheros for granting us confidential access to its proprietary HAL source code for purposes of the review. We join Atheros in encouraging developers to avoid proprietary code in their work, using clean room approaches like the techniques used in the development of OpenHAL.”

Historically, Atheros, while not allowing access to its HAL, has been very supportive of open-source development. It is because of this support that MadWifi has long been able to supply Linux kernel device drivers for Wi-Fi cards that use Atheros-based chip sets for 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g compatibility. Eventually, 802.11n cards will also be supported.

“Our ultimate goal is to have full support for Atheros devices included in the Linux kernel,” Luis Rodriguez, a Linux wireless developer, said in a statement. “By providing legal clearance, the Software Freedom Law Center has helped us get one step closer to making this a reality.”

“We believe that this outcome will clear the way for eventual acceptance of a new wireless driver into the Linux kernel,” said John Linville, the Linux kernel maintainer for wireless networking.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

July 30, 2007
by sjvn01
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MEPIS to switch from Ubuntu to Debian

SimplyMEPIS, a very popular desktop Linux, is going to change back to using Debian Linux for its core from Ubuntu. In March of 2006, MEPIS founder Warren Woodford, decided to switch to Ubuntu from Debian for the next version of SimplyMEPIS, version 6.0.

The plan was to use Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Service), aka Dapper Drake, as MEPIS’ foundation.

Woodford made this move because Ubuntu has a six-month stable release cycle that will enable MEPIS to offer its customers a dependable release schedule, Woodford explained at the time. “The switch to the Ubuntu pools was made to provide our users with a more stable underlying system,” he said.

Things have changed. “Dapper was not updated in the way our users expected,” Woodford said. “Personally, I think the Ubuntu people spoke sincerely and accurately, but perhaps ambiguously. So there was a misunderstanding among users. The fact is Dapper was updated with security fixes, but not with new versions of the applications.”

At first, Woodford worked around this. “In 6.5 [the next released version of MEPIS] I attempted to create an incremental path forward for MEPIS and Dapper by compiling newer versions of applications for the 6.0 base, and with a lot of work I succeeded for that release. However, along the way I discovered that many of the packages in the Ubuntu Dapper pools were greatly out of date and not very useful to MEPIS and Dapper users.”

You might ask: Why doesn’t Woodford make the six-month releases of Ubuntu, such as the recently launched Feisty Fawn, Ubuntu 7.04, MEPIS’ foundation?

Woodford explained that Ubuntu is rebuilt almost from scratch every six months using source packages from Debian EXPERIMENTAL. “This is a wonderful thing from the point of view of improving the Debian EXPERIMENTAL code. Over time the improvements will make their way through Debian Unstable, Debian Testing and finally to Debian Stable.”

But, Woodford said, for MEPIS users this means that Ubuntu does not provide a foundation for long term incremental upgrades. “Ubuntu is almost a whole new distro each time it’s released,” he said. “By using the EXPERIMENTAL code, each and every time, the Ubuntu code tree is inherently less stable than the Debian code tree, which contains additional levels of testing and vetting and fixing of code.”

Woodford said that sometimes the Ubuntu tree contains desirable newer versions of major user applications, and the major user applications, such as Firefox and OpenOffice, come from upstream sources where the code was already stable.

So it is that Woodford has decided to go back to Debian for MEPIS’ Linux heard. In particular, he will be using Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0 — code-named Etch.

“For the next release of MEPIS, we are using a common core based on Debian. As usual, we will have a MEPIS kernel optimized for performance and out-of-the-box hardware compatibility,” Woodford said.

When it comes to applications, Woodford will be using either up-to-date binaries or compile either the “Debian or Ubuntu variant of the source code, using whichever appears to be the best compromise of up-to-date and stable code.”

Woodford has also found that although Ubuntu is source compatible with Debian, it is becoming less and less binary compatible with Debian. “This was not obvious over a year ago, but it is very obvious now,” he said.

What all this means for users is that, “This new process will allow us to have a major release that can be incrementally updated for two years,” Woodford said.

The first test release of the new Debian-based SimplyMEPIS is expected to appear in early August.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

July 30, 2007
by sjvn01
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Why Cisco Shouldn’t Drop the Linksys Brand

We’ve known for a while now that Cisco was planning on doing away with its Linksys brand. My question for John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO, is: “Why do you really want to hurt your company so bad?

Back in April, Chambers said, “Over the long run we will move to a Cisco brand in the consumer and commercial space. That will evolve over the next year.” Since then, Chambers reiterated that the Linksys brand was coming to its “end of life” and that in “the evolution of the [brand] it will all come, over time, into a Cisco brand.”

Why? Because, Chambers explained, while the Linksys is well known in the United States, its not well known globally.

And, thats a good reason to kill Linksys, because?

Thanks to my wife being a branding expert, I know a wee bit about branding. Who cares if only a few people globally know about Linksys, if everyone in North America knows the Linksys name?

I asked people shopping in the network section of the Best Buy in Asheville, N.C., what name they thought of when they considered buying network equipment. My totally unscientific survey found that 10 out of 11 said Linksys, with number 11 mentioning D-Link.

You can’t get brand recognition like this overnight. You usually cant get it over years. When people think SMB (small and midsize businesses) or SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) networking equipment, they think Linksys.

It’s really pretty simple. Big networks: Cisco. Little networks: Linksys. Or, as a friend of mine put it, “John Chambers doesnt really think that selling to my dad is the same thing as selling to Rackspace?”

Reading between the lines, I think Cisco is making that mistake. Now, Cisco hasnt officially buried Linksys, so theres still time for them to back up. I really hope they do.

Of course, there’s some overlap between Cisco and Linksys customers. Cisco Smart Business Communications System is an integrated Cisco product engineered just for small businesses. Im sure there are SMB customers for Ciscos Unified Communications 500 Series integrated device, which provides eight Power over Ethernet ports wireless, security (VPN), firewall, etc., at a cost of between $650 to $750 per desktop.

But, you know what? I’m also sure there are smaller SMBs and SOHOs that would prefer to pay less per desktop with a mix and match Linksys solution of say a WRT150N Wireless-N Home Router and a RV016 16-Port VPN Router for less than a hundred bucks a desktop.

Last, but not least, Cisco needs to look around at other technology businesses that thought that SMB and SOHO customers were the same as their enterprise customers. They’re not. They never have been. They never will be.

Technology companies that believe in one-size fits all brand, channel and support customer needs don’t tend to do well. Usually, its the SMBs and SOHOs that get the short end of the stick in these deals. I know Linksys customers aren’t really where Cisco makes the big money. Still, some of those little companies do grow into the ones where Cisco can cash six- and seven-figure contract checks.

So, if I were Cisco, I wouldn’t chance alienating them by killing off Linksys. Theres a lot of life left in the Linksys brand, products and service. And, I, for one, don’t see any down side in letting Linksys live on.

A version of this story first appeared in eWEEK.

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