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Linux and business

Perhaps the most-hyped rollout at LinuxWorld next week will be that of LinuxCare, a new Linux support operation. LinuxCare is not the first company to make a go at providing support to Linux users, but it seems to be the best financed, and with the best PR. They have taken a chunk of venture capital and set up an extensive call center and database in anticipation of the support calls to come. Happily, they claim that their support database will be made freely available; this should be a major donation to the Linux community. With any luck, LinuxCare will drive another nail into the coffin of the old "Linux has no support" line that we have been hearing for too many years. (See: their latest press release, and pointers to articles on the press page).

As if the attention they are getting were insufficient, the folks at LinuxCare evidently think that Linux folks don't deal with enough bugs, so they're throwing one into the mix. This one, however, is a 1999 model made by VW, so you may not want to squash it. See their announcement for full hype and details.

Cool toys department: the folks at LinuxPPC Inc. will be demonstrating a quad-CPU PowerPC system at LinuxWorld Expo. See their announcement for more.

Caldera and Helius Systems have announced a Satellite-based Internet Router running Caldera OpenLinux. Their joint announcement promises easy installation anywhere in the world. This is a satellite downfeed only, one of the reasons why approval for the system can be gotten in just about any country. An uplink is also needed to get a fully-functional Internet link, though the uplink can be as small as a 33.3Kb modem on a phone-line. Performance on the system is rated at an average of 326.4 Kbytes per second (test in question used 10 workstations doing simultaneous ftp downloads). The upfront cost is under $3000, with a monthly access fee of $109, making this a good solution for small businesses, schools or communities, but not for a typical end-user. The real strength of the system comes in its ability to provide Internet access to remote locations. Helius already has customers in Japan and Taiwan and has tested the system in a remote village in Alaska. They will be sponsoring the 10th annual Distance Learning from Telecoop, a Telecommunications Coop for Colorado, in Breckenridge, CO, in April and will be demonstrating the satellite router by providing Internet access for the conference.

Caldera also announced a RAID "enterprise storage" product built with MTI's "Gladiator" RAID system. Details in their press release.

Sun has a deal whereby they will provide board-level UltraSparc systems to a number of system integrators to be built into Linux boxes. Sun seems to be increasingly seeing an interest in supporting Linux on their hardware. See their press release for details.

Version 0.90 of the Uniform Driver Interface (UDI) specification has been announced. Also announced (again) were the future availability of reference implementations, including one for Linux done by Intel. See the press release for more.

Virus protection for Linux? Saphos came out with a press release this week announcing the availability of their "Anti-Virus" product for Linux ("Unix finally receives professional virus protection"). This announcement brought out a bit of curiosity in some, since Linux is not known for having serious virus problems. What reason would there be to buy this product?

LWN gave the folks at Saphos a call and got some answers. This product is intended for server systems which have clients running certain other operating systems which do have occasional virus problems. It will scan files on the server looking for viruses that can infect those other systems, and scream when it finds something. The product is also evidently capable of looking for Linux viruses, but they currently have none in their database. So, as Saphos put it, if you are running a pure Linux environment there is "not much reason" to run this product. If you have more susceptible systems around, however, it may be worth a look.

A new Linux consulting and support company, Blackspring Communications, has announcedits existence to the world.

Linux training in England. The folks at GB Direct in London have announceda set of Linux courses starting in April. Titles include Linux - the commercial reality and Care and Feeding of a Linux system.

Press Releases:

Citrix, new versions of MetaFrame and WinFrame.
Corel, closing of deal transferring NetWinder division to Hardware Canada Computing.
Prolifics, 96% successful deployment rate among their customers.
RealNetworks, beta release of RealProducer Plus G2 for Linux.
TeamWave Software, Workplace 4.2 beta.
Bittco Solutions, NetReality neural net virtual reality document management thing.
Tech Soft America, Linux support in HOOPS 3D graphics system.
Live Software, Inc., new versions of JRun and JRun Pro.
Artecon, Linux support for their RAID and Network-Attached Storage devices.
SCO, support for Linux applications.
GraphOn Corporation, showing off products at LinuxWorld Expo.
Silicon Graphics, shipping C2Net's Stronghold server.
URLabs, Inc., beta release of I-Gear 3.0 for Linux.

February 25, 1999

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