ZDNet UK has an interview with Caldera CEO Ransom Love. He says, “The competition is not Red Hat. We will go out and visit other Linux players and ask them to participate. We have already talked to Red Hat and Mandrake. The issue is not to compete with Red Hat but to look at how we can grow Linux on a worldwide basis. If we can do this then we grow the pie and we can all do very well out of it.

The intent is to include many individual players and members. Companies will be welcome to sponsor and participate in the initiative, and it will provide a nucleus to cross-license technology between one another.”

Yet another take on UnitedLinux, this one from the BBC. The headline’s more interesting than the story, which is pretty much just the facts: “Four firms selling the Linux computer operating system are banding together to create UnitedLinux. The move seems to address the criticisms of software developers who have to contend with a variety of different versions of the alternative, cooperatively developed system.”

info@linuxcertified.com writes:
LinuxCertified Inc.,a leading provider of Linux training, today announced the launch of its latest offering: Installation, Configuration and Administration of Red Hat&reg Linux 7.3 based systems.

This audio/visual workshop is designed to provide professionals with a self-paced learning tool to get fully comfortable with Red Hat Linux systems. This workshop will enable users to build, configure and manage Red Hat Linux Systems in any production environment. Created by industry’s leading administrators and trainers, this
step-by-step training is ideally suited for busy schedules of today’s IT professionals.This workshop leverages on the renowned Linux Fundamentals and System Administration bootcamps being provided by LinuxCertified.

This launch comes at the heels of introduction of Red Hat Linux 7.3 on May 6th.This latest version of distribution from industry leading Linux distribution vendor Red Hat includes updated core components as well as a comprehensive pool of key open source applications. “By bringing this carefully crafted training program within one month of the launch of the Red Hat&reg Linux 7.3 distribution”, said Rajesh Goyal, Vice President of Marketing at LinuxCertified, “our trainers have enabled professionals to be on the forefront of deploying Linux systems, thereby cutting costs while maintaining superior quality of services.”

This workshop is available at retail on June 11th. LinuxCertified is offering a discount on all pre-orders before June 11th.

A detailed description and ordering information for this course is available at:

http://linuxcertified.com/redhat73_ica.html

About LinuxCertified, Inc.

The mission of LinuxCertified, Inc. is to bring Linux to mainstream IT usage. We firmly believe that Linux has an enormous potential, once it crosses over from the early adopters to the more mainstream users. Our goal is to help this transition by providing:

– Linux trained and certified professionals

– Linux certified products that cater to mainstream users rather than early adopters.

Contact:

info@linuxcertified.com
http://www.linuxcertified.com/

————————————————–
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc.

Here’s LinuxandMain.com’s take on the UnitedLinux announcement today: “The new distribution will be aimed solely as business customers, with distributions providing entirely separate desktop products that will not involve the ‘UnitedLinux’ distribution, according to the CEO of SuSE, Gerhard Burtscher. Desktop users are of no weight in the group’s decisions, it was announced, and there will be no ‘UnitedLinux’ desktop distribution from any of the four companies.”

LinuxDevices.com writes, “In this whitepaper, Mack Allison provides an introduction to Asterisk,
an open source project which implements a Linux-based Private Branch
Exchange (PBX) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform. Asterisk
turns a Linux system to the task of switching calls, and offers a large number of features to support communication in a business environment. “Asterisk can do just about anything in software that a traditional PBX could do with specialized hardware. It unifies systems to provide tremendous possibilities for information services. Seamless use of Packet Voice allows Asterisk servers to intercommunicate throughout LANS, private WANS, and the Internet. Asterisk provides a sophisticated solution for IVR platforms, wide hardware interoperability, flexible wide area phone networks, and advanced telephony features — all at reasonable cost.” Read the whitepaper here“

Timothy R. Butler writes, “In an unprecedented move today, Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux announced a joint development program known as UnitedLinux. As was expected based on leaks from the companies earlier this week, the foursome will merge their R&D efforts to create one core Linux distribution. Read the full story at OfB.biz“

– by Tina Gasperson –
The big United Linux announcement today was anything but exciting. After the
word leaked earlier this week, it seems the press had everything just about
figured out. Early this morning, press releases and announcements rolled in from IBM
and members of the UnitedLinux initiative. The UnitedLinux.com Web site opened
up and Slashdot linked to it. By the time the conference call happened at
11 a.m. EDT, it was anti-climatic.

But it gave all the CEOs a chance to congratulate each other and tell us how
optimistic they are for UnitedLinux. Each of them sounded as if they were
reading from prepared statements, except for Caldera CEO Ransom Love’s off-the-cuff comments
at the beginning of the call. Interesting note: In the announcements and on the
Web site, the companies partnering in UnitedLinux are listing in alphabetical
order, but on the conference call the pecking order was a bit different:
Caldera, SuSE, Conectiva, then Turbolinux.

Everyone agrees that life will be much easier with UnitedLinux. Each company is
hoping to expand global reach — indeed, it was emphasized that combined, they
share the bulk of the market in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and are second
in the United States, and that UnitedLinux supports 10 languages. Turbolinux
CEO Lee Pham hit the nail on the head when she said that UnitedLinux is
eliminating the two factors that have been “inhibitors” to Linux growth: what
she called the limited availability of business software, and the perception
that there are too many versions of Linux. “There will be a large ecosystem of
software and hardware partners because we have simplified the process. Now there
is one ‘go-to’ organization to give guidance to customers and partners.”

UnitedLinux is open to every Linux around the globe. The code base will be
unified, and each vendor will simply add to the base its own proprietary or
additional software. Imagine if you will, a “UnitedLinux Inside” logo on each company’s
CD. United Linux is only for the enterprise, and each member company will still
be free to continue to develop its own desktop distribution independently.

Love says that the source code will be made freely available to anyone who wants
it, but that the UnitedLinux brand will carry a price tag.

Love talked about the decision not to include Red Hat from the start: “Pulling
together the four companies was a pretty daunting task. We started from the
inception [with the intention] that UnitedLinux could be used by more than four
companies, but it would have been counterproductive to start with more than
the four.” Love says that as soon as the ink was dry on the United Linux
agreement, they called Red Hat. “We met with [them] and invited their
participation and promised we’d have follow up discussion over the
next several weeks. I also had a call with Mandrake and they were also very
receptive and open to having further dialogues.”

Several software and hardware vendors expressed support for the concept: AMD, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Borland among them. HP and IBM were quick to point out they will continue to support Red Hat, in addition to UnitedLinux.

Many potential questions about UnitedLinux are answered in an FAQ at Unitedlinux.com.

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Anonymous Reader tells us about this story: “Cisco $15,000 “blade” is really a PC
Running a Linux kernel…

http://www.theinquirer.net/29050203.htm“

At CBS Marketwatch: “IBM said Thursday it inked a deal to get its Linux-based servers deployed for the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy as the movie industry continues to go digital. It’s billed as a ‘significant win’ for Big Blue as it continues pushing products linked to the operating system, now used mostly on mainframe computers.”