I was just reading through some articles on Linux when I happened to come across an article on a distribution of Linux called UnitedLinux that caught my attention. Not that this was a little known distribution. I recall reading about it sometime back in 2002 but at that time, I was more interested in getting my feet wet in this industry & fascinated by Red Hat Linux (I still am...).

What made UnitedLinux different was that it was a collaborative effort from four of the big software vendors - SUSE Linux AG, the former Caldera International Inc. (now known as The SCO Group Inc.), Turbolinux Inc. and Conectiva SA. It seemed like a sure winner having such a developer base & funding behind it.

But things changed dramatically and very fast. SCO is more interested in suing people to make money rather than developing & selling software, SUSE has been bought over by Novell Inc. & Turbolinux underwent a ownership change & then moved out of US market space.

Despite this Unitedlinux still is being sold & supported all the partners except SCO. But the Unitedlinux website has not been updated since April 2003. In the what's new section of its website, the last posting is of 22nd April 2003. Hardly a new posting...

So what happens to Unitedlinux in the future? Not that the whole world will come to grinding halt if Unitedlinux goes down under, but I fear that it would be sad ending to a very good project which had a lot of promise to deliver to end-users and developers in terms of a solid non-Microsoft operating system which was cheap and at the same time well supported & also it does not usher a good news for similar Linux initiatives.

India lost in the finals of Asia cup cricket tournament today, again... As per the statistics, India has lost in 10 finals, shared 2 & won only 1 in the last two years. But that is not the point. The point I am trying to make here is that the debate will again come up that whether Tendulkar is a match winner or is he just a run-machine.

Looking at the match, the memories of the Indian team in the late 90's came flooding to me wherein Tendulkar would always be the lone ranger fighting doggedly against opponents and the other batsmen kept falling at the other end like nine pins. Today's Indian side is much more reliable in terms of contribution from all the team members. But today that very thing was lacking. The scorecard tells a very sad story. After Tendulkar's 74 the next highest is 28 from no. 10 Zaheer Khan and that too in slog overs and 25 extras. None of the other star batsmen could cross even 20.

Tendulkar stood alone like a giant among dwarfs. Trying to win the match on his own. All he needed was a partner who could hold up the other end & just keep on taking singles. But none of the guys could do even that. Tendulkar was making batting look so easy. Ultimately he started running out of partners, overs and ultimately his patience.

India has again ended up being a bridesmaid. No idea when India will start winning tournaments with regularity. Only God knows.