What else would Novell do?

Posted Nov 6, 2004 2:07 UTC (Sat) by dhess (subscriber, #7827) [Link]

Just curious, what disaster are you referring to?

Posted Nov 6, 2004 5:09 UTC (Sat) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Although, looking at the disaster that is suse pro 9.2

It turns out that 9.2 is not a disaster at all, but just looked that way. Some changes were made that caused me to jump to conclusions. Here's the deal, I just got my 9.2 boxed set, which I ordered online from suse.com a few days ago. While installing from the 5 CDs, I noticed a lot of missing packages, things like, for instance, amavisd-new, a key component of the suse spam/virus blocking in earlier versions of suse; also missing were the development tools and libs which I needed, in order to build amavisd-new from suse 9.1 source rpms. It just wasn't on any of the 5 CDs, Nor was openvpn, a very nice alternative ssl-based VPN package that I've used for several years with business customers. The list goes on, and I was majorly bummed.

As it turns out, they have added so much new stuff that it just doesn't all fit on 5 CDs anymore, but it's all on the DVD...OK amavisd-new, and all prerequsite libs are now installed, openvpn is there too, all the good stuff I was originally expecting, and more.

The box is snappier than it was with 9.1, and overall I give it 2 big thumbs up. apologies for the false alarm, I should have known suse couldn't have suddenly become a crappy distro.

Posted Nov 6, 2004 23:57 UTC (Sat) by stock (subscriber, #5849) [Link]

Here's my take on the successive SuSE 9.x failures :

R.I.P SuSE GMBH
---------------

Down in the early days of Linux, when all was fine, a couple students
in Erlangen created a download service at their UNI , to download linux
floppy images and dd/rawrite them to a set of floppies. I believe they
started with the SLS or MCC Interim distro's. The Students sold the
floppy sets to anyone who wanted one for a small margin.

Later on they rolled into the creating and rolling, even programming
your own Distro, and a firm called SuSE Engineerung GMBH was started in
Erlangen, south Germany. Soon the SuSE linux Distro was also available
on CD and with the most due respect, these same students started a fine
Open Source Software company based on Linux. Well not all was open
source in the beginning, SuSE created its own management tool, called
YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool).

Years past by and SuSE grow-ed steadily and then suddenly the big boost
was started and launched : The software developers from Troll-tech in
Norway had created a _real_ killer GUI developer platform for Linux
called KDE/QT. Right from the head start, the SuSE developers team were
into this Troll-tech/QT GUI Desktop Gig, and South Germany was the
center of the Open Source KDE Desktop Project in Europe and even maybe
globally.

From that day on, things seemed to go even smoother for SuSE GMBH, as
the Linux KDE desktop was a brilliant eye catcher for people who even
didn't even know what Linux was. Sales went up and all was fine.

But then the spin-doctor press, you know the dudes who drip blood from
their pens, launched a FUD campaign. "Ohh please don't use the KDE as
it makes use of the Evil Widgets from QT Troll-tech in Norway!" Who
were launching this campaign? As i watch back i think it basicly were
the founders of the GNOME Project, Michael de Icaza , Nat Friedman and
others. Michael de Icaza was previously discarded from a career at
Redmond Campus and was at the time rather interested in the QT
programming stuff.

Icaza and a couple other developers found out though, that when using
the QT widget for programming QT KDE Applications which were meant for
commercial sale, one should buy a License first from Troll-tech to be
allowed to-do so. This pissed these guys really off, and in a reaction
to that the GNOME Project was started.
Since that day the Open Source Community was confronted not only with
FUD story's from the commercial software vendors , but also from inside
their own community. I describe it as a pitch black day in Open Source
history.

One could see several things happening. A Linux Distro could not be
sold anymore if it didn't have _BOTH_ KDE and GNOME on board. Also
Distro Vendors, due to the increased costs of maintaining both
Desktops, had to choose which one was the preferred desktop of choice.
SuSE of course sticked to KDE, and people running Linux could blindly
select the latest SuSE if they wanted to run a polished, smooth and
kick-ass KDE Desktop.

RedHat on the other side selected GNOME as their preferred Desktop but
kept a possibility open to install/use KDE instead. RedHat had always
been the largest Distro vendor, which it became by their originating
launch and invention of the RPM package management system. This was a
slam dunk and soon all respected Distro's out there, had to have a
package management system too. SuSE decided to also start using RPM as
did and still do many other distro's. This gave RedHat the best boost
ever.

Apart from the occasional rows between the KDE and GNOME camps, all
seem to be going pretty OK. But then a weird thing happened. RedHat was
at its peak of Global Linux Market exposure (at that time RedHat 7.3
was installed at almost any Fortune-500 Corporation) when a new
management team was starting to run RedHat. After the RedHat IPO, lotsa
RedHat oldies and founders cashed in and went away, which started bad
times for RedHat.

This was immediately reflected in their products and behavior. RedHat
8.0 was launched and while everyone was waiting for 8.1 to arrive, they
released RedHat 9, which turned out to be catastrophic mistake. RedHat
8.0 contained a broken set of KDE RPMS which made most people who ran
KDE puke on RedHat. Lotsa people decided to leave RedHat for what it
was, and went to, or tried to start of with Debian. A large crowd went
to SuSE and Mandrake, just because they were fed-up with RedHats proven
tactics of KDE Mutilation.

Yes you read that right, RedHat Mutilated KDE on purpose inside its
latest Linux Distributions. Why ? Thats a very good question. And I
think today i have the answer. Not only was this tactic used to have
most RedHat users convert to GNOME, at the same time a total idiotic
"Republican Media Doctrine" styled campaign was started, in which all
GNOME users were shouting to everyone who said the word KDE, that KDE
was total ugly, weird and most important highly dangerous due to the
Evil Troll-tech License. They even had Richard M. Stallman publish a
story to confirm this.

The next question you may ask now, is , who are "They" ? Also a very
good question. But thats not so quite evident to answer.

Some people, fiend or foe have asked me, and i in turn heard this from
other long-timers inside the software industry, that there is only one
thing for certain with the OSS and Linux software : If it is still
around in 10 years to come, it sure won't be coming for free by then.
This is a very important remark which gives dramatic insight into what
has happened and is happening right now.

So how will the desktop in 10 years to come look like ? Will it be
GNOME alike and based on GNOME technology, or will it be based on
KDE/QT development technology? For simplicity i will not speak of
Microsoft here, because Microsoft today, besides their massive market
share and massive amount of cash, is on a dead-end with their software
technology.

The future Desktop will either be GNOME or QT/KDE based technology.
Guess what people! What a immensive huge question this is! If QT/KDE
would win, it would mean that the center of the software industry would
move from America to Europe, mainly inside Germany (SuSE) and France
(Mandrake). A couple of seasoned Software Corporations inside USA have
seen it coming also. First RedHat was transformed into the evil style
Corporation which it is today. Next the European Linux distro's were
and still are targeted for hostile take-overs by the big US software
Corporations.

We were confronted with the software patents campaign inside the EU
parliament, which is still unresolved today. The City of Munich wants
to be a kind and good Municipal Government and decides to support their
local Linux Distro vendor SuSE. A very brilliant move by the City of
Munich, until a couple of weeks later the news get out that Novell just
bought SuSE GMBH for a stinking $300 million. A Total disaster, not
only for SuSE itself but for the whole of Germany as now Yet Another
native German Software Company with full innovative potential becomes a
lame puppy in the hands of a US Software Corporation. A pitch black day
in the Open Source world of Germany.

Not only was SuSE bought by Novell, it was bought for a reason. 1st
Novell will use the SuSE Engineerung power to have their Novell Server
Software upgraded with new fresh Linux power. Another landmark event in
the track record of Novell is that a couple of months before buying out
SuSE, it bought up Ximian/Gnome, which previously also was known as
Ximian Red-Carpet. Ximian , founded by Michael de Icaza, was firmly
supported by Sun Microsystems from the start, because Sun of course
knew that running a overhauled CDE won't do the trick. Again Sun
selected to support GNOME and not KDE/QT.

And thats the 2nd reason. Novell and Sun and any other American
Software Corporation won't select QT Troll-tech, simply because
troll-tech is a Norwegian company and may become the largest software
corporation in Europe. The Americans didn't want that to happen, i
guess.

Novell already decided long time ago to to go for Ximian as their new
Desktop. The fact that Novell specifically "needed" SuSE, for me still
today, was a total bogus idea from the start. This is what will happen
i fear. Novell will allow SuSE to run bleeding to death. They soup up a
couple a nice tech things which are useful, and next Novell will launch
their closed source new Novell Server based on Linux technology and new
closed source Novell Desktop based on GNOME/Ximian technology.

SuSE currently is being "over-ruled" every day by day by a U.S.
Software Corporation. Even if SuSE wants and is able to make a clean
SuSE server and desktop Distro, Novell will never allow them to do
that. SuSE will be left at the garbage. When that happens , Novell will
have achieved its most important task for itself and its U.S. friends :

1. The former European center of Desktop development, SuSE GMBH will
have died.
2. QT/KDE, despite being the better technology, will not be used by
major Linux Software Vendors. Which effectively means that KDE as a
business Desktop is killed off.
3. The City of Munich will be left with a non-existing Software Support
partner, which is what a certain Redmond Software Corporation will see
with a huge smile on its face.

Robert M. Stockmann