UnitedLinux: Turbolinux Sees Lots Of Advantages

By: Jacqueline Emigh
Thursday, July 11, 2002 11:53:04 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4305/1/

The Strengths of Turbolinux

Turbolinux, one of four Linux distributors behind UnitedLinux, sees the emerging unified platform as a path towards reducing its R&D investment on the OS side; funneling more of its resources into "value-added" software; growing its worldwide footprint; and quite possibly, gaining competitive clout versus Red Hat.

First rolled out at the end of May, UnitedLinux is an effort by Linux distributors Turbolinux, Caldera, SuSE, and Conectiva to produce a uniform, global distribution of Linux for business use.

Red Hat, Mandrake, and other Linux distributors have also been invited to join UnitedLinux, although none has done so yet. "If Red Hat does join, it will be up to them to decide the timing," said Turbolinux marketing VP Dino Brusco, in an interview with LinuxPlanet this week.

In Brusco's opinion, the UnitedLinux product line will do a lot of good for ISVs, OEMs, and end customers, as well as for Linux distributors.

"Obviously, ISVs can't support all the various Linux OS. End customers aren't seeing much unique value to the different variants, either. If they want 'XYZ' software application, it might not be available for the Linux distribution they're using. So, the OS is not where the Linux companies should be differentiating," he illustrated.

Each of the UnitedLinux players will pursue its own differentiation strategy, according to Brusco. For its part, Japan-based Turbolinux plans to focus its R&D on value-added commercial products that will run with Linux.

As examples, Brusco cited already released offerings such as Turbolinux Cluster Server 6 and Turbolinux enFusion, for clustering; and PowerCockpit, for server provisioning and management. "UnitedLinux will help us to create more software like these," he added.

Each of the co-founders is also strong in a specific geographic area. The US is Caldera's main bailiwick, while Turbolinux dominates in Asia, SuSE in Europe, and Conectiva in Latin America.

"If you go to Japan, you wont even hear the words 'Red Hat.' You'll hear 'Turbolinux' instead," according to Brusco. "We're also very well positioned in Korea and China, a country that's showing probably the highest growth in the Linux space." Chinese customers include the Chinese Space Agency and Chinese Ministry of Information Industries.

Turbolinux, though, has also been increasingly active in the US business market, particularly in the enterprise arena. The company's direct sales force has nailed down enterprise customers such as JP Morgan, for instance. "JP Morgan is deploying enFusion among thousands of users," he asserted.

Additional enterprises are being lured through the companys OEM relationships with IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Also in the US, Turbolinux is using a recently announced partnership with Mainline Information Systems to pursue the small to mid-sized business market via mainframe resellers.

Other customers on the company's growing list include the following, to name just a few: the Pentagon; the American Red Cross; Sherwin-Williams; First Credit; Yale University; Argonne National Laboratories; Motorola, and, in Europe, the European Synchroton Radiation Facility.

For the foreseeable future, however, the company's retail presence will be limited to Japan, where Turbolinux has much higher brand recognition. "We have no plans at this time to enter the retail market in the US or anywhere else in the world," Brusco said.

Turbolinux, Standards, and Red Hat

Three of the UnitedLinux co-founders--Turbolinux, Caldera, and SuSE--are also linchpins of the Free Standards Group, an industry consortium that rolled out two new standards at LinuxWorld in January: Linux Standards Base (LSB) 1.1 and Linux Internationalization Initiative (Lil8nux) 1.0 Conectiva is a Free Standards Group participant, too.

"Turbolinux was a key driver behind Lil8nux," Brusco claimed. The internationalization standard is designed to lay the groundworks for Linux software that offers full support for languages, currencies, and other elements of localization.

LSB 1.1, on the other hand, brings a significant update to an interoperability standard long under development in the Linux community. Just as with UnitedLinux, proponents have predicted benefits for ISVs, end users, and Linux distributors alike.

"LSB will be good for administrators because everyone has their own personal taste. People will be able to use whatever distribution of Linux they want, while still being able to (easily) run applications," said Nathan Walp, a Virgina-based systems administrator and developer, back in January. Walp has worked with Windows and Solaris as well as the Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, and Slackware distributions of Linux.

Even back then, though, some observors weren't completely convinced that LSB was enough to bring full industry interoperability. Murray Berkowitz, senior VP of advanced technology at Computer Associates, called himself "cautiously optimistic" on that subject.

"LSB would be great. We could build an application once, and then run it on any distribution. Hopefully, LSB will move. Right now, though, we still need to see implementations, test suites, and common services," Berkowitz said, also in January.

LSB 1.1 also marks first-time LSB support from Red Hat. During the 1.1 launch, Red Hat engineers pointed to the lack of a "test suite and certification method" in LSB 1.0, 1.1's predecessor.

Members of the Free Standards Group have announced both a test suite and a verification method for LSB 1.1. Meanwhile, Red Hat officials have said that Red Hats basic version of Linux will comply with the industry standard this year, but that its high-end Advanced Server will not.

Other Linux players vowing LSB 1.1 support include Mandrake, The Debian Project; Linux for PowerPC; and VA Linux, for example.

With consensus rising for LSB, what are the reasons behind UnitedLinux? In Brusco's opinion, LSB was "necessary, but not sufficient" for establishing a Linux platform broad enough to support large enterprise applications, such as Oracle's.

"LSB was certainly a step in the right direction in terms of (uniform) software APIs, for example," Brusco said this week. LSB, which is based on code from Caldera, is also meant to standardize Linux file systems, libraries, and commands.

"UnitedLinux will include both LSB and Lil8nux," Brusco said. UnitedLinux, though, will also produce greater uniformity, by standardizing components such as the installer and drivers, he added. "Once the installer is created, for instance, it will be used by each of the distribution companies," he predicted The UnitedLinux products are slated for release by the end of 2002.

Meanwhile, member distributors in UnitedLinux stand to gain a "tremendous competitive advantage" in relation to Red Hat, according to Brusco. "By gathering our resources together, we'll be able to support a much larger catalog of software applications and hardware," he contended.