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Penguin Computing @ Salon 60

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
LinOx wrote in to send us a a link to a nice little story about penguin computing. Talks about VC and more. Nice little article.
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Penguin Computing @ Salon More

Penguin Computing @ Salon

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  • I wish I could do business with them. I was all set to order a couple $3000 servers, but they don't take purchase orders unless you're a fortune 500 company.

    That's great -- until you realize that it cuts out a lot of multi-billion dollar companies (like mine). Gee-whiz. Wish I could send them a credit app (Penguins accounting department doesn't take them "Fortune 500 only please.").

    The answer? I got a couple of Compaq's rack-mount servers for about the same money, from a company that wants to deal with me.

    Steve-
  • VA has name recognition. Machines I build are far faster, compatible, reliable and cheaper. We are currently revamping our company to be more Linux based. Wait to see our service and machines. Should be appearing July 5th.
  • I've heard of it too many times not to ask...
    --
    Pirkka

  • Re:VA (Score:1)

    by pirkka ( 4031 )
    But with journaling ext3 VA can sell _huge_ servers with more disk then I can imagine and charge huge money from supporting the beast.

    So IMHO some software sure makes sence.
    --
    Pirkka Jokela

  • Speaking as someone in the VC process (recently successful too!), it's very difficult to find VC folks that are willing to give you funding without eating your company.

    I've recently read tales of people giving up 40% of their companies for $500k. Crazy. I give the VA guys credit for making through the VCs, and presumably heading for the Mezz without having their company eaten.

    --j

  • So if someone should post about VA I shouldn't comment on it just because the story is about a company that ships Linux machines? Whatever dude.

    On another note, in the few times that people have ahd troubles with VA, I have always been the first to put my email and number out there and personally try to fix whatever problem occured. Yeah, I can see why you'd hate for someone to do that.

    And no, I will not stop reading slashdot, I enjoy it, fascist. (oops, almost invoked godwin's law)

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems
    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • And we did, his name is Dan Schorr (not the newsguy, mind you :-), he's really done wonders during our growth spurt.

    But on the "usefullness" question, look at it this way, we ship systems, and we base our parts decisions on advice from the engineers who wrote the software. We aren't in the distro business. They do good work on linux, linux grows, we grow and linux progresses.

    So the logical next question is "what about Raster, Mandrake, Mark V. etc.." well, we anticipate a time when the majority of shipments will be desktops vs. servers, at that point it will be nice to have desktop guys here to help out.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems

    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • Chris DiBona (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know the guy, but it seems to me he is doing his job if he is participating in online fora, and with his active role in SVLUG.

    As for the new and noteworthy employees of VA - more power to them, they seem to be happy enough to work at VA and if they want to leave for any reason, I'm sure they could do that too. Get over it.

    Continued success to both VA and to Penguin!

    Why does everything have to turn into some kind of flame war? KDE/Gnome, Gnu/NoGnu, OpenSource/FSF, RedHat/every other distro.

  • If I have a complaint, I damn well say it, straight forward and up front. I don't go waffling around behind the "Anonymous Coward" apparition slamming a man's livelihood.

    I'm no apologist for VA Research and frankly don't even like most of their product line (with the exception of their 4U rack, which might look a bit dated but which is a solid piece of engineering). But that doesn't change a thing. To accuse me of a VA love fest is just typical sleazy conduct by somebody embarrassed about being called down for his sleazy behavior.

    If you have a complaint, say it. Otherwise I, and anybody else here with any sense, will assume (probably correctly) that you work for a competitor of VA trying to slime them from behind the veil of anonymity in the sort of sleazy behavior that typifies Microsoft, not Linux. 'Nuff said.

    -E
  • I think part of VA's point is that they've hired a few device driver writers over the past six months. Penguin is not yet to the point where they can support their own brace of device driver authors, but I'm sure they'll hire a few as they grow.

    I don't think you're quite aware of how tiny these companies were only a year ago... only a year ago, VA Research probably was doing about the same amount of business that Penguin is doing today, and Penguin today can barely cover overhead if the amount of money listed in the article is correct (the hardware business is *EXPENSIVE*, it's not like the software business where you buy disks for $3 and sell them for $50, if you're making 30% gross profit off of a hardware sale you're doing good). So until recently, Linux hardware vendors just weren't in a position to actually write drivers. Sure, they donated video cards and such to device driver authors (e.g. the Neomagic driver for laptops came about because a vendor loaned the author a laptop to write it on), but paying a $50K/year or more salary to a device driver author when you're barely making overhead (forget about any real profit!) just isn't feasible.

    As for the *BSD's, I like them. The problem is that they don't support most high-end hardware. For example, where is the RAID controller support for FreeBSD? There was a guy where I recommended FreeBSD to him because it'd handle files bigger than 2 gigabytes (sorry Linus, but 2 gigabytes is too small in today's world), but he couldn't use it because he could not find a hardware RAID controller that worked with it.

    Actually, my favorite *BSD at the moment is OpenBSD. *EXTREMELY* clean "classic" BSD. Heck, even their install program is just a shell script, that you can stop in the middle and look at and restart and do the steps by hand even if you so desire. Classic Unix, the way it was in the old days. Makes you pine for the days when Linux was similarly small and uncluttered and straightforward. Unfortunately, the moment you try to get a modern GUI running on OpenBSD you immediately learn the reason for part of the clutter of modern Linux systems -- there's just a ton of graphics libraries and such needed by modern software. Just building 'ghostscript' pulled in over a half dozen other packages...

    My FreeBSD 3.2 should be here soon. Tim installed it on a machine in the lab and it rocked on a machine with only 16 megabytes of RAM even when running resource-hungry KDE. Linux dies under KDE if you try running it with less than 32 megabytes of RAM (and it really prefers more than 32 megs, 64 for best performance). It'll be interesting to compare it with OpenBSD, I think OpenBSD will prove out to be much cleaner, but FreeBSD will probably end up being more practical due to the larger number of packages and ports available for it, as well as much faster on the x86 platform (of course OpenBSD is much faster on other platforms, since FreeBSD doesn't support any other platforms yet!). If the *BSD's had been available at the time Linus was looking for a low-cost Unix clone, I know we'd all be running FreeBSD today. It wasn't, and we aren't, but that doesn't make it a bad OS, just one without enough hardware support to make it feasible for the big file servers where its fast speed and support for large files would be great.

    -E
  • I have no personal reason to love VA (hint: I don't work for them, have never recieved a dime from them, and am no longer in the Linux hardware world), but I do think that Chris had a valid point. Seems to be plenty of "Anonymous Cowards" posting testimonials of praise about Penguin and slamming VA here. And frankly, I think it's kind of sleazy. Not to mention unnecessary -- Penguin has done a very good job of moving from $0 to $1M within a year's time, thanks to choosing a name uniquely suited to the Linux market, aggressive marketing, and product that meets a demand (Linux). And none of that requires sleaze.

    For those who complain that one or the other is late with shipments, etc., one problem with being that size is that the supply chain is a b****. Especially when you outgrow what a Tech Data or Ingram Micro can give you, but you aren't big enough to buy things in quantity 1,000 directly from the manufacturer. I can attest from personal experience that it's easy to chunk machines out the door lickety-split all day long -- as long as you have the parts. VA and Penguin have an advantage in that they're next door to many distributors' warehouses, but supply side still can't be a picnic.

    -E
  • Why aren't these hardware companies doing more to support drivers for cool hardware, like mpeg decoders, dvd drives, ...? And what about the BSDs?

    For the Free Software community, that's the really key thing they could contribute -- drivers for otherwise closed & proprietary technology.

    I'd like to see more valueadd before I'd plunk down the big bucks for a linux hardware solution. (Penguin's going the right way by bundling LCDproc devices)
  • I meant 1% of 5-10 %, or one out of a thousand or two thousand.

    That still being good etc, you have to compare it to tripling your burnin costs. How much is that one in a thousand worth? Suppose it costs $10 to burnin, or $50 (I don't know). That means the cost has now gone to $30, or $150, on every system, to save one in a thousand from being shipped back. Might it not be better to save the $30,000 or $150,000 and simply FedEx a replacement?

    It's their business decision.

    --
  • Well, when I see dell hiring linux developers and releasign code back, I'll say they are truly committed.

    Chris
    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • Open source really isn't that big a deal to the end user. Yeah, we can talk about competition enhancing the marketplace, but end users don't really care whether the program is good, they care whether it's good ENOUGH. Once it can get your work done, the program is sufficient. The future of computers isn't in selling software, it's in selling business solutions. You might use software, and you might sell it, but it's just a tool. It's kind of a fuzzy concept, but my point is that, open source or no, the money will always be in helping people get their work done better. 97% stability under NT is still one day down every month. People will pay loads, though, to have NT reconfig'd and supported to boost the number to 99.5 and higher. People will also pay loads to have linux configured. Companies want an out-of-box solution.
  • I worked for 7 years writing board and chip level diags for a 68k board manufacturer. I sure don't remember the stats now, but we burned in for 24 hours or so, and most failures were in the beginning. I will make a SWAG and say the next two days might have detected 1% more failures, which were already in the 5-10% range at most. So you triple your burnin expenses to avoid failing one system out of a thousand.

    --
  • Sell Hardware. Seems pretty simple.

    Take away the difficult installation and you've overcome the biggest hurdle to mass conversions.
  • So far the company sounds promising, and penguin's website looks good.

    (I know I didn't say much, but hey it's my first post, and at any rate, Ii had to prove that so far, somebody read this :P)
  • Nice article; I wish all of the Linux hardware companies well.

    Linux needs to be available pre-installed on computers available off-the-shelf at retail outlets for it to start invading the home in large numbers; a properly configured Linux box is not any harder to use than a Windows box.

    After all, how many of your non-techie friends/family instlled their own copy of Windows? (As an example, Caldera is easier to install than Win98SE; reviews at my site)

    Recently I showed a Mandrake installation running KDE to a friend of mine (who is a true dyed in wool Windows NT supporter / advocate) and his initial comment was: "It's just like Windows" - he had never previuosly evem tried to use a Linux box.

  • .... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > Penguin makes computers pre-installed with the
    > Linux-based operating system

    Damn, that is one politically correct way of putting it. Not "GNU/Linux," which pisses some people off, and not just "Linux," which pisses the other people off.

  • More evidence... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...of South Park's corrupting influence! The first image you get after visiting the site are two penguins who have ignited their anal wind and are flying through the air under SATAN's influence! Beware!

    (or laugh :)

    I would be curious to know, though, how many systems exhibit some sort of failure within that 24-72 hr window that Penguin tests in but VA doesn't. There's probably some statistical analysis you could use to determine if those extra 48 hrs are significant (would probably have to compare against units which failed within the warranty period, which is probably every one that has ever failed to this point).
  • I managed to get my hands on a Dell Precision 410 with Redhat 6.0 pre-installed (I won the LinuxCare win-a-dell contest). I have to say, Dell did a nice job configuring it. It's all slicked up with xdm, so if you didn't want to, you'd never even see a command line. Hell, I bet even a kindergartener or an MCSE could administer this thing! Pre-installed Linux is most definitely a Good Thing for the community, I'd say.
    ----------------------
  • Funny how Alison Huynh mentions crossing the chasm, while I worker as an engineer for a speech recognition company, they hired those guys to come in and help them with their buisness plan. Going so far as to make all of us (engineers) go listen to that crap....

    You can take on the gorilla, you just gotta catch him when he's not looking.

  • It sure sounds good. (Score:3)

    by Scary ( 65284 ) on Thursday July 01, 1999 @10:14AM (#1822671)
    Sitting in front of me are 2 machines from Penguin Computing. All in all there good machines. My biggest issues with Pengin is SERVICE!!!! The computers were deliverd 2 1/2 weeks late, one monitor short, one secure web server short and no manuals for the SCSI card or tape drive. I also never got a detailed description of each computer I had purchased. (Even after asking them 3 times for them).

    Calling for tech support was even more fun. I guess I thought they would have had a detailed description of each computer they had "Custom Built" for me, but now I just assume each order form must get tossed out a window after a computer is shipped. I was trying to get X working right and called to ask them to lookup and tell me what video card was in my computer, they had no idea who I was, or what type of computer I had purchased, even after giving them the serial number.

    And if your interested, check out the technical support area on there site.

    http://www.rightnowtech.com/cgi-bin/penguin?faq

    WOW, a whole 11 questions.

    I guess all I have to say is this baby penguin makes some nice hardware, but had better beef up on service if they want to play with the big penguins.
  • How most of these posts seem to be about VA and not aobut Penguin? Honestly, this is kind of creeping me out, is VA a big topic over at Penguin?

    It seems to me that the Linux HW world is big enough for a lot of players, Penguin and VA included, but this sort of strange AC posting simply to slam competitors is just uncool.

    On another note, VA has the volume of sales to be able to have people like Ted and Raster on staff and we feel it is our duty to hire people like them as otherwise, Linux is just some huge exploitation game, and we are not into that.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems.
    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • This is actually a problem we've tackled carefully, each VP that comes in is, well, forced to drink our Kool-Aid. The problem is finding specialists in thier field who are also linux zealots. It's not possible in some specialties, so we have to literally train them to understand Linux.

    This is a problem that Penguin had with thier vp, Alison as well, it's nothing new. All of the growing Linux companies have to deal with this.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems

    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • Not only that, but although it was mostly `open source', I think `free software' was, if not mentioned directly, at least stronly alluded to by such words as ideals and dogma. Not something one would normally associate with `open source' alone.

    I can understand the avoidance of mentioning `free software', but it's still sad that anybody directly mentioning `free software' tends to get branded as a kook.

    Anyway, it was certainly a good article.

  • Wow, I'll say. My server was almost 3 weeks late and we initially agreed on an expidite order and fee!!! Then they didn't send the entire order! I really had trouble getting them to call back or even email, until our CFO started barking about payment cancellation. Nice machine, but not worth the pain. I'll build next time (I thought this would be quicker)
    Grrrrrr
  • Mmmh, let's see, paying the current maintainer
    of ext2fs won't help improving it, and working
    on the journalled version of ext2 so that people
    don't have to wait hours for each fsck on huge
    disks. I guess VA can't use that work at all :-)
    (work which will obviously be available to everyone).
    For those who attended Ted's talk on btrees in
    ext2 at linuxexpo 98, he never got the chance to
    implement it because he was too busy doing other
    things at his previous job. Well now, he'll have
    the chance to work on those things.

    As for Rasterman and Mandrake, if you look at how
    seriously broken the desktop is in RH 6.0, I'm
    not quite sure why it would make sense to improve
    those either...
  • Well, of course we see competitors around every corner, that's how modern corporations work. I hate to tell you this, but , newsflash, having the author of the ext2 fs and raid on staff -does- add value to our systems. And the quality of components we use does mean that they are more costly than the average machine, but so be it, people want good machines, and we'll sell them to them.

    We really don't see not hiring good people as an alternative.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems


    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

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