distro wars

Posted Feb 28, 2004 21:20 UTC (Sat) by mattdm (subscriber, #18)
In reply to: Puzzling Non-Sequitor by ewan
Parent article: A Global Survey of Linux Distributions (O'ReillyNet)

I was at the recent Desktop Linux conference in Boston, and I found the difference between the presentations by SuSE and Red Hat interesting. Red Hat kept pounding on the "complete open source software stack" thing, and praising the GPL. I don't think SuSE mentioned source code at all, but instead emphasized how they were the best distribution because of all the wonderful propriatary add-ons they had.

And from a "hey, this just works!" short-term perspective, going with SuSE in seems pragmatic for that reason. But for the long term, I hope they move to a more open model.

distro wars

Posted Mar 9, 2004 9:31 UTC (Tue) by mwilck (subscriber, #1966) [Link]

Both RedHat and SuSE are companies trying to make money.

All that these different presentations tell is that the marketing strategies of the two companies have slightly different priorities.

SuSE is targetting the "pragmatic" home and office user, while RedHat, aiming at enterprise customers, has turned its back on home users completely, and considers it important (marketingwise) to say things that grass-roots free software followers like to hear.

Neither RedHat nor SuSE are for people looking for a really community-oriented distribution. Of the company-driven distributions I know, Mandrake comes closest to that ideal.

One thing that SuSE-opponents often ignore is that SuSE puts LOTS of resources in development for core Linux components that benefit every Linux user, like the Kernel, X Windows, ALSA, and KDE. RedHat is the only other Linux company I know that has similar merits in that area.