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IBM gets hip with 'cool' Ubuntu PC deal
The Register (UK) ^ | 5th August 2008 19:02 GMT | Gavin Clarke in San Francisco

Posted on 02/10/2009 11:29:23 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

Canonical offers Office 'alternative'

LinuxWorld IBM is today expected to announce expanded backing for Ubuntu in a desktop and collaboration software deal to challenge Microsoft's Windows and Office.

Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, has agreed to re-distribute IBM's Lotus Symphony productivity suite with its public Linux repositories. More details are expected later today.

The news follows IBM's decision earlier this year to offer a version of its Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is, according to the suits at IBM, "a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor.'"

The deal is expected to be announced by IBM at the same time it announces agreements with Ubuntu, Red Hat and SuSE to work with local hardware partners to build and distribute "Microsoft-free" PCs. Systems will feature the Linux distros running IBM's OCCS and other open-source applications.

IBM said products would be tailored to vertical sectors and be branded by the local IT partners.

IBM added that shifting market forces, slow adoption of Windows Vista, and growing demand for alternatives to "costly" Windows and Office-based machines: "Offer a glimpse of the ripe market opportunity for Linux-based desktops to proliferate."

The company will also announce Novell's Linux Enterprise Server 10 as the first Linux distro to be shipped with a new line of self-managing server appliances targeting small businesses. The appliances, Linux Foundations, are designed to promote uptake of IBM's Domino email and collaboration software in SMBs.

Accompanying the news, IBM announced the Lotus Foundations ISV Developer Toolkit, which it said would simplify packaging of Domino applications for appliances.®


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: ibm; linux; servers; ubuntu
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To: zeugma
BTW, I personally own several Edimax EW-7128g cards and I just bought an Edimax EW-7318USg today.

The 7128 cards have worked great with Ubuntu. Plug and play.

21 posted on 02/10/2009 1:23:32 PM PST by Knitebane (Happily Microsoft free since 1999.)
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To: Knitebane

Well theoretically you should gain some with the full 64 bit memory paths in the processor ... But it looks like whatever gain there might be is lost with poor software design. Multithreading also needs some real attention before multiple processor chips is going to mean much to average users. Now they just seem to idle along.

I have been using UNIX since well since, OK, I forgot ... I did meet with Dennis Ritchie back in the old days at AT&T trying to convince him and others to let UNIX go, but AT&T was determined to try and make money off it. Bad move ...

Tagline works ... LOL.


22 posted on 02/10/2009 1:35:49 PM PST by Tarpon (If you don't stand on principle, you stand for nothing at all.)
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To: Tarpon
Well theoretically you should gain some with the full 64 bit memory paths in the processor ... But it looks like whatever gain there might be is lost with poor software design.

Well, with 64-bit the pointers are twice as large so there is a decrease in performance right there.

64-bit means that you can move twice as much data across the core in the same amount of time but unless your applications are IO or memory bound you won't see a significant increase above a 32-bit system.

Once you move above 4GB of RAM 64-bit really takes off, mainly because using BigMem or HugeMem pages on a 32-bit system induces a significant performance hit due to the way that a 32-bit system has to page RAM (much like the old EMS memory management under DOS.)

If you have a 32-bit system with 32GB of memory, like many of the databases I deal with at work, moving to 64-bit will show a marked performance increase, but if your system has 4GB or less and is idling along with less than 5% IO you're not going to see much improvement.

It's also true that a lot of application software really isn't taking advantage of the larger memory space or extra registers available on a 64-bit platform. A lot of application people have just recompiled their apps to run on 64-bit systems. That will get better with time and more exposure to 64-bit programming.

23 posted on 02/10/2009 1:54:05 PM PST by Knitebane (Happily Microsoft free since 1999.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

IB4GE


24 posted on 02/10/2009 1:56:48 PM PST by B Knotts (Worst economy since the Third Punic War)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I sure hope they have fixed the bugs and tweaked the interface in Symphony since the last time I tested it.

If/when it becomes available in the repo’s, I’ll try it again.


25 posted on 02/10/2009 2:21:30 PM PST by papasmurf (Impeach the illegal bastard!)
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To: B Knotts

Right!


26 posted on 02/10/2009 3:11:38 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: papasmurf

I was a heavy user of WordPro for my Math classes....did a great job .


27 posted on 02/10/2009 3:12:44 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: papasmurf
I sure hope they have fixed the bugs and tweaked the interface in Symphony since the last time I tested it.

If/when it becomes available in the repo’s, I’ll try it again.

One thing that i REALLY miss is Lotus Smart Suite. There were some features with Lotus Word Pro that i haven't seen elsewhere. It was a joy to work with. Wish they'd port Lotus to Linux.

28 posted on 02/10/2009 3:31:30 PM PST by Calvinist_Dark_Lord ((I have come here to kick @$$ and chew bubblegum...and I'm all outta bubblegum! ~Roddy Piper))
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To: Tarpon
Multithreading also needs some real attention before multiple processor chips is going to mean much to average users. Now they just seem to idle along.

Windows could help with this. I'm running XP Pro on a Phenom Quad, and while you can associate a given app to prefer a given core, by default XP seems to throw everything on Core 1. Manually associating every app with a given core is a stupid idea, first because it takes my man hours instead of Microsoft's, and second, because even if I did go and associate 25% of the things I run with each core, the mix of what I'm running at any given time is always different so from time to time I'd probably end up running all the Core 2 stuff at the same time. Why doesn't XP default to using an unused core if one is available??

29 posted on 02/10/2009 3:37:35 PM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I still have it on 3.5 floppies. LOL


30 posted on 02/10/2009 3:57:48 PM PST by papasmurf (Impeach the illegal bastard!)
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To: Calvinist_Dark_Lord

I agree. I have the CD that came with my old IBM lappy. I was hoping that they’d start giving away Notes, since it’s such a breeze to install and backend a server.


31 posted on 02/10/2009 3:59:38 PM PST by papasmurf (Impeach the illegal bastard!)
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To: Still Thinking
One of the mysteries of life. You would think that a scheduler that just assigned the next available core to the next process would do something good, but the designs of the OSes were apparently blind-sided by multi-cores.

I have all the Windows, but Vista, after the beta trial, it just took too much to run to recommend it to any client.

32 posted on 02/10/2009 4:14:07 PM PST by Tarpon (If you don't stand on principle, you stand for nothing at all.)
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To: Tarpon
You would think that a scheduler that just assigned the next available core to the next process would do something good, but the designs of the OSes were apparently blind-sided by multi-cores.

I know. I've written one-off stuff that even does that (with other types of resources). I guess it goes to prove Brook's law that once you get past a few programmers, productivity takes a nosedive.

At least stuff that runs all the time in the background like anti virus and firewall can be assigned to cores 2-4, and let the foreground stuff you consciously run be on core 1. I've done some of that but haven't taken the time to do it all as yet.

33 posted on 02/10/2009 4:21:18 PM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Still Thinking

Yeah, when I was running the OS development group, it was clear that as the number of programmers went up, what went out the door went way down. The only way was with as few software engineers as possible and divide the work into packaged and constrained entities. This is where UNIX/Linux model kills MS. A giant hairball is not going to work very well, ever.

I had many a conversation with the original AT&T UNIX team on what they saw as the ideal way to develop complex systems. Sure would be nice if programmers today would learn the lessons of the past — They should dig out some of the old UNIX style guides and follow them.


34 posted on 02/10/2009 4:35:00 PM PST by Tarpon (If you don't stand on principle, you stand for nothing at all.)
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To: Tarpon
A giant hairball is not going to work very well, ever.

When I do stuff myself (one programmer) I try to break it down in blocks with as few as practical defined inputs and outputs. Easier to debug a small black box, then move on to the next one. Plus, if you come up with a better way to do the job of a given black box, you just recode it and drop it in, confident you're not breaking 6 other boxes.

35 posted on 02/10/2009 4:51:21 PM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Still Thinking

bump


36 posted on 02/10/2009 4:54:06 PM PST by jokar (The Church age is the only time we will be able to Glorify God, http://www.gbible.org)
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To: Still Thinking

That’s how UNIX was built a series of function boxes. But then the need to tune always gets the best of them, and wrecks the whole plan — sigh.


37 posted on 02/10/2009 4:59:48 PM PST by Tarpon (If you don't stand on principle, you stand for nothing at all.)
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To: Tarpon

Reliable and easy to troubleshoot/fix is better than tuned, IMHO. (Course I’m not writing stuff on which the performance of millions of CPUs depends. YMMV)


38 posted on 02/10/2009 5:08:38 PM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: papasmurf

i’m installing OpenSuSE 11.1 this week. Still have the installation CD that came with my old IBM Aptiva. Maybe i can install and run it out of WINE under Linux.


39 posted on 02/10/2009 8:20:16 PM PST by Calvinist_Dark_Lord ((I have come here to kick @$$ and chew bubblegum...and I'm all outta bubblegum! ~Roddy Piper))
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To: Calvinist_Dark_Lord

I checked the Wine Appdb, and didn’t find it. A cursory check using google, shows two folks have installed it, but neither one reports usable functionality.

I would recommend installing VirtualBox, Qemu, or VM, all free and available in the repositories, and, after installing Windows there, install SmartSuite. It will work that way, I’m sure.

I’ve been using VB for about two years on a TabletPC and especially for Filemaker, it’s very reliable and, since Sun bought them, more feature rich than ever.

Of course, you can always pay CodeWeavers to customize WINE for you and then it’ll work.


40 posted on 02/10/2009 8:44:59 PM PST by papasmurf (Impeach the illegal bastard!)
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