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On Novell's acquisition of SUSEOn Novell's acquisition of SUSEPosted Nov 4, 2003 18:56 UTC (Tue) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232)In reply to: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE by vblum Parent article: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
[W]hat will Novell gain from actually maintaining and selling a consumer-oriented Linux distribution? Um, customers? My father-in-law -- a long-suffering Windows user -- may have provided a partial answer in his response to my pointing out this article to him: What I don't understand is why if Linux can and does compete well why is there not a better option for non computer literites like myself to use these products on a daily basis,--- or is there? His issues: Can he do his taxes on Linux? When will his Intel PC Camera Pro Pack USB camera work? Will his scanner work? How will he transfer his email? What is he doing now on Windows that he'll have to live without, and for how long? Stuff like that. Stuff that's going to eat a lot of my time if he switches to Linux. Maybe a real consumer-oriented distribution coming from a recognized established company (especially now that that upstart RedHat is out of the consumer channel) will provide the kind of hand-holding security that users like him desire when deciding to make the Big Leap. [I honestly don't know whether he mispelled "literates" just to jerk my chain, but I wouldn't put it past him. :-) Hi, Fred.]
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On Novell's acquisition of SUSE Posted Nov 5, 2003 10:43 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] To be fair, migration from Windows 98 to Windows XP can also be incredibly time consuming, since it's crucial to do a fresh install not a 'Win98 upgrade', for stability reasons, requiring all apps to be re-installed.I recently spent 5 days of 10-12 hours doing this for a friend who has a small business relying on a huge number of specialised educational applications, some of which had licensing floppies and won't work on WinXP. A hardware upgrade (RAM and hard disk) was needed to cope with WinXP, and there were two major issues that would not have happened with a Linux migration (namely inability to set the CD drive letter to D: on the multiboot Win98 installation with a new hard disk, and also a parallel port ZIP drive taking over the C: drive on Windows XP!). Migrating to Linux would not necessarily have been that much more time consuming, since such major issues are much less likely to happen - in fact just buying some new hardware and apps would have been quicker and less costly, since the basic hardware upgrade would have been cheaper... As for the Novell acquisition - a competitor of my employer was taken over by Novell a few years ago, and that was the last we ever heard of them... Hopefully Novell's focus on Linux is significant enough that they'll make a success of this acquisition.
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE Posted Nov 5, 2003 19:42 UTC (Wed) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link] As for the Novell acquisition - a competitor of my employer was taken over by Novell a few years ago, and that was the last we ever heard of them... Hopefully Novell's focus on Linux is significant enough that they'll make a success of this acquisition.I was a sysadmin in a Novell shop for a few years, then our management team decided to consolidate on one platform, and because of no other reason than the fact that they were bombarded with MS advertising, they chose Microsoft. I know this because of subsequent meetings with them, where I asked point blank why MS was chosen to replace a technically better system. It was because the market was buzzing more with excitement over Microsoft Exchange (read: MS was pumping massive amounts of cash into the advertising game), and if we adopt Exchange and have to run MS Windows for it, why not run MS Windows on all the other servers? (these managers were not the technical type at all... just the type of people MS sales people go after). It was a miserable time and a massive downgrade. But all that is said just to make my point: Novell has always had technically superior products, but they don't market worth a flip. MS has always had technically inferior products, but they advertise so aggressively that the average person would think the world might stop spinning if MS products were to go away. There's really no telling what fine software Novell has to offer. We'll never hear about it. I hope they get it in their heads that technology alone won't do it against the worlds most aggressive marketer (read: most willing to lie, cheat, or steal to make money), Microsoft. MARKETING IS KEY!
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