>> I'd like to see some Norton Utils clone project started up for
>> Linux before Norton themselves decide to do so. The main reason
>> being that the people in the know to do this, would likely be
>> hired by Symantec to do it in the first place, and might be under
>> contractual obligation to NOT do a GPL'd side-project, etc...
>
>As a joke I always wanted to make a clone of MSD for Linux, just
>because you could call it LSD, for humour-value. I haven't done
>it because /proc and procinfo pretty much does that already.
Heheh. In that case, your job would be extremely easy because
half of the work is done for you allready. Now you just have to
wade through understanding the horrible ncurses interfaces.. ;o)
>> I know that Ted T'so or someone in his position worked with
>> Partition Magic I believe. I don't see a GPL'd product that
>> replaces it... so extrapolating, if a NU came out for Linux,
>> we'd be more pressed to come up with our own GPL'd effort.
>
>I think there is a clause that states the source of that will be
>release on 19xx or maybe 20xx as GPL.. he's mentioned it in the past.
Really? If that is true, I'd appreciate it if someone else
(perhaps Ted himself) would verify that.
>> In reality though, Linux is too dynamic I believe for a company
>> like Symantec to put out such a low level product that would not
>> need updates with each kernel revision...
>
>To be safe you could make a statically linked version for
>major releases (2.0, 2.2, etc) or try to make it fairly kernel
>independant.
I think that any such utilities should ALL be statically linked
to start with, or at least the low level ones like "NDD" and
"SPEEDISK/DEFRAG".
The thing with making it kernel independant, is that the routines
that it calls in the kernel sometimes change. Not often likely,
but there would be no guarantee. This alone might scare away
someone like Symantec from releasing something like Norton
Utilities for Linux.
Funny we're discussing this. I'm having a discussion with Jeff
Merkey right now about how commercial companies may not support
Linux due to the sometimes changing interfaces of the kernel. It
is very much true that such changes can and will make some
companies avoid Linux, or perhaps avoid it until they understand
it better.
Perhaps that is what Symantec is doing? Or more likely, Symantec
doesn't see any profit available currently in Linux. I'd have to
say that I'd agree for now. Their products would fare better
with desktop users, and with network administrators that have to
maintain desktop users boxes, etc...
Those same administrators usually know how to fix problems
without such a program as NU. When Linux on the desktop starts
to become a real reality, I think we'll see things change quite a
bit though.
-- Mike A. Harris Linux advocate GNU advocate Computer Consultant Open Source advocateTea, Earl Grey, Hot...
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