From kragen@dnaco.net Tue Sep 29 11:22:53 1998
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 11:22:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kragen <kragen@dnaco.net>
To: "Robert G. Brown" <rgb@phy.duke.edu>
cc: Jukka.Isosaari@hut.fi, beowulf@cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov
Subject: Re: Beowulf in a Box (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.93.980929093612.12705B-100000@lilith.phy.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.96.980929111421.21177O-100000@picard.dnaco.net>
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On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> I wouldn't be surprised if an Intel
> Human or two listens in on the beowulf list, but for obvious reasons
> (if one thinks about it) they need to be mousey-quiet.

Well, I've thought about it.  Why do they need to be mousey-quiet?

> BTW, (to further support the notion that Intel is already heavily but
> quietly involved with linux) the newspaper business section in the
> Raleigh News and Observer today announced that Intel and Red Hat and
> Netscape are issuing a major announcement in a few days of a real live
> "corporate alliance" (businessspeak for "a deal").  Recall RH is in
> Durham just down the road apiece from here; I don't know if the
> pre-announcment made the national news:-).

1. yes, it made the national news
2. the announcement was supposed to happen today
3. A big picture of Bob Young was on the front page of the business
section of the New York Times yesterday; the article on Red Hat covered
a significant fraction of the front page and the second page, and
inside, there was a big photo of the people from rhadl (who work on GNOME).
4. nobody at Red Hat was ever quoted as confirming the deal in any of
the half-dozen or so articles I've seen about it since Friday, and I
haven't seen any articles on Slashdot about it today, so maybe it was a
hoax.

I bought a copy of the NY Times.  I should have bought two, I think; I
hope to frame it.  :)

> I believe that in this
> alliance Linux is about to receive the formal stamp of approval from
> Intel and be legitimized as a "real" alternative to Microsoft.  The
> article goes on to list some of the major software vendors that are
> about to release linux binaries and RH's funding of "improved GUI
> desktop" stuff which I take to mean either KDE or Gnome or both.

Red Hat is funding GNOME, and some time ago, they issued a public
statement about why they will no longer be including KDE on their CDs.
Also, they announced last week that they would (a) no longer ship CDE
because of security problems; (b) continue to support copies of CDE
they'd already sold; and (c) give people a refund if they'd bought
CDE.

>  It
> also listed the current number of linux users worldwide as "2 to 10
> million" (pretty wide range there, but the LOW end is impressive
> enough) -- I'm curious about their source for that figure either way.

The source for almost every figure on the number of Linux users is Bob
Young's white paper, "Sizing the Linux Market", which was updated early
this year to the figure "5 to 10 million".  It also mentions that the
market doubles yearly, so we're probably well over 10 million by now.

Kragen

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
A well designed system must take people into account.  . . .  It's hard to
build a system that provides strong authentication on top of systems that
can be penetrated by knowing someone's mother's maiden name.  -- Schneier


