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Is Tuxtops' Next Project Custom Disk Images? 40

Posted by timothy from the damn-good-idea dept.
Tina Gasperson writes: "Nathan Myers, the former CEO of now defunct LinuxLapTops, says he gave Tuxtops a suggestion that could turn into big business for them. He shares the scoop, and Tuxtops CEO Graham Hine confirms (pretty much)[in this story at] Newsforge." The short n' juicy is this: after announcing last week that it would no longer sell laptops with Linux pre-installed (the business model till then), it now "looks as if Tuxtops might make a full-time venture out of creating those ready-made Linux installation images." Which is a great idea, considering that the complications of making sure a particular distro works predictably and reliably with AcmeCorp's computers is probably one of the major reasons it's so tough to buy laptops running Linux.
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Is Tuxtops' Next Project Custom Disk Images? More

Is Tuxtops' Next Project Custom Disk Images?

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  • salon.com? Are you crazy? Don't give those bastards any more hits than the ones they get from their desperately elitist SF readers. You might increase their advertising revenue. Concentrate on the colleges; hits don't help them at all.
  • ..It'd have a major effect on the Linux Market. Effectively; they'd be the link that Linux has always needed. "Support". My recommendation is that everyone send them the type of system setup they have for laptop's and desktops. That's a whole shit load of work for them not only that but a central repository on the web of all equipment that works with linux would rock. For instance with all the setups they receive or can imagine. They can throw that into a database and people could easily select what type of sound card that they want, with what type of video card knowing that it will work. Not only that but then you'd have companies like Loki not focusing so much on support for their games but actually writing games. This has huge possibilities; I'd be willing to help as well!

    Even though this hasn't been said fully I think at least this is how it should go. No other operating system I can think of has this type of support. They'd monopolize this niche very quickly. Hrmmm maybe I should steal the idea and run with it =)
  • What is wrong with Winmodems?
    A build from
    http://walbran.org/sean/linux/stodolsk/
    works with latest kernels and runs OK on my Tecra 8100 (It still sucks because of crappy video, but well ...)
  • Face it, Linux isn't usually an easy install. There are drivers for almost everything out there but you really have to know your internals and do your research before you install. Too much work for most people.

    Here is how I'd like Linux to install:
    Insert bootable CD in drive.
    Turn computer on.
    Answer a few basic questions (language, location, and that kind of stuff).
    CLICK on OK
    Take a coffee break
    Come back to computer and reboot.
    Enter your USERID and PASSWORD and enter your desktop.
    Find a collection of applications, games, and tools that are point and click friendly, easy, and reliable to use.

    If this sounds remarkably like a Windows installation you are correct. But I want more and better in the applications/tools/games arena.

    I believe in Linux but am working from a Windows desktop right now. Why? Because for work I need to. Why? Because thats the way it is - for now. Someday I suspect that will change. Hopefully to Linux or BSD and KDE (or similar). Hopefully sooner rather than later. But like so many companies, we run a variety of standard systems, 98% Compaq or IBM. Frankly support costs still dictate the Windows standard. That will not change until the install is as easy and as automatic as Windows and the hardware detection better than Windows. Sorry but that is a fact.

    I think the IS department is a bigger factor than the end user. Right now the end user can get more comfortable with an X desktop environment than the IS department can - mostly because they see the support of it as a nightmare. Being in the IS department I can agree. Being a Linux advocate, I disagree. It isn't the same, it is different but it does the job in pretty much the same way. I could sell this. What I can't sell is the install and upgrade nightmare. Until that is solved I can't justify or sell it. Period.

  • I'm posting this on a Compaq Presario. WinModem is no good but a Xircom real-port 56K/10/100 card makes up for that. NeoMagic chipset is well covered now with XFree86. I really like this laptop and Linux works well on it since RedHat 4.2.

    That's my experience, yours might vary, though.

    DanH
  • We are talking LAPTOPS here - just go ahead and bit the bullet - setup a database with all the makes and models. It isn't THAT much work. Especially when it is vital to your business. Also this would be a HELL of a lot easier than detecting the correct hardware under windows... Least IMHO.
  • A modem requires 2 things. First off, you have to send and receive stuff down a phone line - that's the physical layer stuff. Then you have to decode what you've received using the protocol layer (V.90, etc), or encode what you're going to send out. Only after that do you get to the "PC software" bit where you just call it COM1 and forget about the details.

    A true modem does the physical layer stuff AND the protocol layer stuff. Your PC can just throw stuff at the modem and not worry about how the modem's going to send it. This makes life very easy for the PC - it doesn't have to do any processing to send stuff, so it can devote all its resources to displaying web pages, playing Q3 Arena, running video decoders, etc.

    A Winmodem only does the physical layer stuff, and that's the problem. See, the protocol layer is where the sophistication is - phone lines aren't naturally good at sending stuff much above 19K2, so there's all sorts of tricks used to try to make sure that your data gets there intact, and that you're receiving what the guy at the other end actually sent you. Winmodems shift all this processing onto the PC, instead of doing it in the modem card itself, and that drains a fair chunk of processing resources away from what you're actually wanting to do - Q3, etc.

    And there's the problem that someone's got to sit down and write the driver software for the PC to do this protocol layer stuff. The problems here are that (a) it's a very complex piece of code; (b) it requires the driver to access physical locations in the PC's interface memory, which isn't good from the hardware abstraction side; and (c) it requires the author of the software to know EXACTLY how the Winmodem hardware works so that he/she can interface to it correctly, and Winmodem manufacturers aren't telling. There's drivers already written for Windows, but Linux drivers would have to be written by some volunteer, and the 3 BIG problems above will stop anyone (except a total hero, or a total loony :-) from writing the code.

    The reason the manufacturers do this is simply cost - you need something to do the processing for the protocol layer, which means an extra chip or several on the card, which makes the card cost more. By buying a Winmodem, you're trading off modem cost (maybe £25 for a card instead of £35, I don't know what that is in USD) against performance.

    Grab.

  • Which was submitted last week to both /. and newsforge, and wasn't deemed newsworthy. oh well, I guess speculation on what they're doing next is more newsworthy than the fact that they're no longer selling linux laptops.

    --
  • Please explain your theory that being designed for NT has any bearing on how it will work with a *nix?
  • That's what it's all about - the market. I believe that custom ready-to-run images are actually much better than distros, and Tuxtops can still keep their existing customers. You pick out a laptop (or, at this point, any computer) and then tell them what you want. TADA! 1 custom-made system without 15 text editors you don't use! It sounds like a very good plan to me. Best off for Tuxtops, however, is that they can now market to any linux-hungry computer user, not just people that want their laptops. And what big corporation moving to Linux wouldn't want CDs with images you can just copy instead of having to install? Not to mention the IT folks in charge of it...

    My karma's bigger than yours!

  • Even though pre-made images are great, something as simple as a recipe for tweaking a distro to work well with a system could be lucrative.

    I am one of many people who host websites devoted to describing how to get different distros working on different machines. In the eleven months since it was first published, my site [hamilton.edu] has had over three thousand hits. Three thousand hits may not seem like a lot, but those could be three thousand customers paying money for a product (a guide to installing linux on their particular laptop) that is nearly free to the producer (simply harvest the data provided by sites linked to by the Linux on Laptops [utexas.edu] database.)

    Beyond that, by providing support and even compatability gaurantees for specific laptops they have information for, this could well be a very, very lucrative business for a company, without having to produce their own images!

  • I think this is a good plan, it will make preinstallation a lot easier and there will be a lot easier than actually installing on every computer. I know how much easier it is to send images to computers rather than actually installing and configuring the drives and stuff. I think it makes a lot of sense and should definitely be tried rather than wasting time installing and configing.

  • There was a similar joke lawsuit article in National Lampoon magazine circa 1981. I think it was the issue that had the excellent "Incredible Mindroasting Summer of OC & Stiggs" (which itself anticipated many of the teen movies of the last 20 years (including, perhaps, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" -- though I am not sure which came out first)).
  • It's too bad they can't make a profit selling generic laptops with Linux loaded. Here again we see the real life problems with an Open Source OS in a capitalist economy.

    Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can load the OS on their own laptop, if they are so inclined. Why pay a company to wipe an Inspiron clean and load Linux at extra cost when it's cheaper to get the laptop directly from the manufacturer and load an alternative OS yourself? Is it the hardware drivers? Is it merely the convenience of having someone else do the work for you?

    Dancin Santa
  • Sorry for the offtopic post, but this is timely. If we could all please start reloading web sites hosted in California, we can increase their power shortager by a bit, further giving those tree-huging fuckers the darkness and cold they deserve. I've been doing mainly sfgate.com, salon.com, and some universties -- please just put a wget command in a shell loop, it works fine.

    Also, if you live in Texas or anywhere west of the central time zone, turn on ALL OF YOUR LIGHTS (I also have my oven on, the heat and AC on, and the refirgierator door open, and all of my monitors on) so that your local power company has less power to sell to those bastards. British Columbia is also selling the fuckers power, so all you canucks can get with the program too.

    If you have ever had to endure some Californian telling you how his .com company was lots of "fun" because they "did lots of fun coding," if you have ever had to rip out a lot of california specifid pollution control hoses and wiring to get your car working again, if you have ever cursed the price of paper because they won't let anyone cut down trees anymore, if you have ever cursed having to wait five business days to purchase a gun because of Barbra Feinstein, AND ESPECIALLY, if you have ever had to endure brown outs because the Sierra Club sued to stop a new power plant in your state, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE.

    ACT NOW OR YOU WILL HATE YOURSELF LATER.

  • Or better yet boot it with something like the linuxcare business card cd (I love mine BTW) Give it a database of defaults for different laptops (AFAIK the basics don't change as much as with desktops) and have it do the same thing. Could be cool you would still have to avoid stuff like winmodems but that could be a good idea.

  • Tuxtops plans, an elaboration (Score:5)

    by V for Victory ( 35058 ) <mrallen1&yahoo,com> on Thursday January 18, 2001 @10:27AM (#498389)
    I am the CTO at Tuxtops, Mark Allen.

    I'd just like to give a bit more elaboration on what we're planning.

    We're working on a software product which encompasses the idea of customized linux distributions for a specific vendor's hardware -- laptops, desktops, and servers -- but the product goes way beyond that idea in many important respects. The product is in the arena of "holistic" Linux system management.

    I can't fully elaborate right now about what kind of project we're working on -- trust me, I would love nothing more than to blab on and on about it, but it's just not possible right now. Provided we can raise the capital we need to build this thing, though, I'm sure that most folks will be impressed with the result.

    Finally, if you're reading slashdot and you're a Linux competent marketing or sales professional and think you have what it takes to drive marketing and/or sales forward for a revolutionary idea in a new company (and you live around the Bay Area), send us an email. We'd be glad to hear from you. (info@tuxtpos.com [mailto])
  • looks at calendar

    looks at today's date

    looks at date of newsforge article

    Like I said..last week.

    --
  • Since they haven't announced their new product yet, it's a bit difficult to guess what TuxTops is going to do, but I sincerely hope it's better than "a distro that installs really easily on your notebook".

    After all, recent distributions already do quite a good job running on notebooks themselves (even RH7 worked fine on both my portable machines...), so the competitive advantage of such a thing might be small -- and getting smaller fast.

    I guess the coolest possible outcome would be something like "Ghost meets PartitionMagic meets (RedHat,SuSe,...) Linux" where they would make it really easy to quickly deploy Linux onto systems that may or may not have an existing OS that needs to be preserved and where they would take care of special driver needs.

  • It's a shame this was posted anonymously.
    I'd like to buy this guy a beer.
  • This is very entertaining. I appreciate you sharing the story of your incipient mental breakdown with everyone here at Slashdot.

    Please do let us know what you think of next.

    -- Brian
  • I wondered what all the anti-VIA sentiment was about. I still don't see it though. I've used exclusively VIA chipsets for the past 5 years and I've been very happy with their performance. I've not had any problems with DMA33 or anything of the sort on any platform. I have never had any problems with VIA's chipset drivers for NT or 9x. I haven't seen anything on the Linux side of things (driver wise), but I've had no problems there either.
  • I thinks that a great product for linux newbies. GIve them a chance to use linux, let them learn how to configure later. The sucess of linux depends on the people who use the product. If more people use it because they do not have to worry about the set up, is that not a good thing?
  • ...ready-made Linux installation images

    A company is actually going to make a full time venture of creating/selling ISO's? Why would a company actually go to all the trouble to deal with TuxTops when they can go create their own ISO image from mkisofs or just go and use that slow rsync process with Debian? Many IT departments make their own lean version of some distro anyways.

    ...is a great idea, considering that the complications of making sure a particular distro works predictably and reliably with AcmeCorp's computers is probably one of the major reasons it's so tough to buy laptops running Linux.

    It might be a square peg round hole approach but there are better ones out there. Something along the lines of the LBP would work much better but I don't ever see it happening as the major Linux companies would be against it. A more logical method would be a BSD approach to it all: an actual source tree (gasp!) that has structure in its development.

  • Although I don't use the actual distribution, I very much like Kondara [kondara.com]'s sleeker, goggle-wearing, anime style Tux and friends.
  • >it would no longer sell laptops with Linux pre-installed

    Could it be that there is no market for Linux on laptops?

    Linux is a kernel, not an OS nor a religion - me

  • This idea could go far.

    This sounds like it's basically a Ghost image of a harddrive, except more intelligent. I'd be more than willing to buy a disk like this. Especially if I could just boot to CD-ROM instead of my SLOooooooow floppy drive.
  • Here's my recommendations for Linux laptops:

    Compaq Presario: AVOID! VIA chipset + WinModem = driver nightmare!

    Compaq Armada: Better; since they are designed for NT, Linux should be no problem.

    Toshiba Satellite Toshiba Tecra and Satellite >$1500: Consider, though the WinModem is still there; these things were also designed for NT, so Linux should work as well.

    Sony VAIO series (excluding F630 and C1VN): Excellent; it uses the Intel 440BX; however, the Yamaha sound chipset isn't supported quite as well. Only consider if you're willing to spend $$$ for a powerful glitzy laptop.

    Sony VAIO PCG-F630: AVOID!!! Sony used a VIA chipset and an AMD K6-2 for this one, so expect teething driver problems all over the place.

    Dell Inspiron: Almost a shoe-in for Linux.

    Dell Latitude: Watch out, this one wasn't designed for NT at all, so Linux probably wouldn't like it.

    Either way, I applaud the efforts of Tuxtops; just getting the drivers for each hardware component can be hell (especially when you're stuck in bash because of a bad video driver!).

  • Acme Corp. Computers? (Score:5)

    by Royster ( 16042 ) on Thursday January 18, 2001 @10:07AM (#498402) Homepage
    Somehow I don't feel so safe. Acme Corp. dosn;t have a good record of safety [legalnews.net].

  • Re:Great idea (Score:4)

    by brad3378 ( 155304 ) on Thursday January 18, 2001 @10:31AM (#498403)
    How tough would it be to create a Perl script to run in Windoze that could detect your existing hardware configs, and creates a basic *.iso for installing a Linux Distribution. It would obviously have to create some custom /dev/ files and might take a long time to run. Maybe the hypothetical script/program could even download the latest stable drivers from a trusted source.

    I hate to say it, but If I have to fill out some web-page with all of my hardware and network settings (to order this disk), I'll probably type something wrong. A script that runs on the actual machine (or even over a network) could likely be idiot proof. Have it automatically (and safely) create a working boot/partition manager, and you'd have a Winner!
  • Nike has its swoosh. Cocacola has its swooshed "Coca Cola" logo. Tuxtops has a fat penguin. Where's the swoosh?

    You might laugh, but trademarks make a big difference in directing public perception about one's product. Trademarks are a constitutionally protected property (under Article I) for the very reason that consumers are better able to judge the quality of an item by the quality of its trademark: good products have good marks, and bad products don't have the time put into making good marks. That's how the economy works, and that's how it ought to be.

    But where's Tuxtops's brilliant trademark? All it has is a goofy penguin with a top hat [tuxtops.com]. If you're a first-time laptop buyer, is that the kind of company you'd have a gut-instinct to give your money to? I would conjecture it isn't. Tux may make for good stuffed animals, but on the screen he looks fat and bloated, two characteristics Linux is not supposed to have (as compared to is competition from Redmond). If Tuxtops insists on having a penguin, then they should have a single abstract dot (the penguin) riding a blue swoosh. Now there's a trademark worth its salt!

    This, more than anything else, is why I fear Tuxtops will go under, soon. I'm disappointed Nathan Myers didn't include it in his list at all, much less at the top of his list where it belongs. You should call Graham Hine, CEO of Tuxtops, at 877-735-0638 to let him know you care but share my reservations.
  • i think that i speeled it wrong, but that amaythyst seemed like a very nice laptop at linuxworld. damn. oh well, i have my dell. (which doesn't compile DRI!)
  • (OK, I know it's pretty sad to followup to your own posts, but I can already smell the flames...

    P.S. Note that the subject is a poor attempt at humor, not the result of my limited command of the English language.

    (The point is that TuxTops intentions will be discussed to death on Slashdot before anyone even knows what the product is. Whatever...)

  • I won a Compaq Armada E700 from Mandrake at LinuxWorld in San Jose. It works great with Linux! :)

    My Gateway Solo at work also works well. They both handle PC Card changes much better than Windows....
  • How tough would it be to create a Perl script to run in Windoze that could detect your existing hardware configs

    My guess...very.(tough that is).
    Configuring hardware under Windows is VERY difficult and fault prone with very strange behaviours. Device conflicts and hardware peculuarities are often ignored, only to pop up in the strangest places. My Windows config works (mostly), but looking at their configuration GUI shows some devices duplicated with an exclamation point on one. Deleting the one cause the computer not to work, so I leave it alone.

    Relying on this information to configure a Linux system would propogate bad info.

  • > Dell Latitude: Watch out, this one wasn't designed for NT at all, so Linux probably wouldn't like it.

    I've got Red Hat 7 installed on a Dell Latitude CS and it's working very well. No special configurations or anything.

    I even popped in a Lucent 802.11b card and it worked without doing anything special.
  • Yup but the one thing they would *really* have to do is make it ready to work with more than one distro. I could see RH, Mandrake and Debian about covering 99% of the customer base for something like this. Done well this could be a *great* thing. But if they hack to much of the distro they are going to put people off. If anyone from tuxtops sees this keep in mind balance is the key. Put the modules, drivers, and config files one needs and leave everything else alone. I would pay for that service and so would many other people. OTOH customize too much and I'll just do the work myself.
  • it's really too bad that tuxtops decided to stop selling laptops i got one and it's hella badass.
  • Many laptops on the market (most notably the lower-priced ones) are geared toward Windows 9X. To cut corners, they use hardware that comes with virtual drivers that emulate certain hardware components of the device (the most notorious example of this scheme being the winmodem). NT can't handle winmodems at all, since they don't have a true COM port, and so neither can Linux, Unix, etc. Also, the Intel 440BX chipset, despite its age and unbelievable longevity on the market, is by far the most supported chipset out there. VIA can't seem to release one fully stable set of NT drivers for its chipsets. Though a chipset driver isn't necessary, an OS can't take advantage of DMA modes for hard drives unless the chipset drivers are in place and stable.

    There are other reasons, but I'll leave it like this: NT and *nix have similar demands for hardware stability. None of the "blacklisted" laptops live up to those demands.

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