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SuSE Announces More Layoffs
jdfox writes: "SuSE announced more layoffs on Friday: 10% reductions in Germany, or about 50 (mainly non-technical) staff. This follows the February layoffs of 30 out of the 45 US staff in Oakland. Perhaps a merger with MandrakeSoft is in order? Both are RPM-based, both offer KDE-based admin tools. OTOH, as MandrakeSoft is right in the middle of an IPO, it might not be the best time to be thinking about a major acquisition. I mainly use Debian, but SuSE is an excellent distro, and I would hate to see the company go bust."
Nobody takes a lizard as a logo seriously.....in order to step it up and play with the big boys perhaps Suse should incoporate a common household object as it's logo like some other companies have....like a flying door or something else (****window****)
Well, I'm an ex RedHat user. ;-).
I keep looking at new RH releases, but the one thing I like SuSE for is -ironically- one aspect of YAST: the complete package integration. I have _one_ CD I insert, and I can choose from all the packages in the distro. RH lacks the integration, their idea of a 'Pro' pack is to throw in some more CDs and a manual - it's up to you to figure out what you've got and on which CD it lives (the only way out is to use the DVD instead, but that's not always practical).
And manuals - the contents makes you forgive the occasional translation slips (stray bits of German throughout). RH is quite good - but I feel SuSE beats them by being complete. And it usually works
Their technical expertise and quality of their distribution is closest to Caldera. As well with geographical location - Caldera and Suse engineering are about a 12 minute train ride apart in Germany. I have a lot of respect for both distributions in their focus on quality. The Caldera and Suse engineers actualy have quite a bit of mutual respect for each other and get along quite well (from very good sources). They are also both focussed on making the LSB a major force in the Linux world wich is a very good thing.
I don't see how MandrakeSoft and SuSe could merge since the former is 100% dedicated to free software, whereas SuSe does not have any problem with not releasing ISOs of their product and developping a proprietary software (YaST).
There are too much philosophical gaps between those 2 companies. I bet lot's of Mandrake developers would leave the company if they were told to work for SuSe.
- gcc 2.96 is actually more standards compliant than any other version
of gcc released at the time Red Hat made this decision (3.0 is even more compliant, but not as stable) yet).
It may not be "standards compliant" as in "what most others
are shipping", but 2.96 is almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98
compliant, unlike any previous version of gcc.
- gcc 2.96 has more complete support for C++. Older versions of gcc could
handle only a very limited subset of C++.
Earlier versions of g++ often had problems with templates and other
valid C++ constructs.
- gcc 2.96 generates better, more optimized code.
- gcc 2.96 supports all architectures Red Hat is currently supporting,
including ia64. No other compiler can do this. Having to maintain different
compilers for every different architecture is a development (find a bug, then
fix it 4 times), QA and support nightmare.
- The binary incompatibility issues are not as bad as some people and
companies make you believe.
First of all, they affect dynamically linked C++ code only.
If you don't use C++, you aren't affected. If you use C++ and link statically,
you aren't affected.
If you don't mind depending on a current glibc, you might also want to
link statically to c++ libraries while linking dynamically to glibc and other
C libraries you're using:
g++ -o test test.cc -Wl,-Bstatic -lstdc++ -Wl,-Bdynamic
(Thanks to Pavel Roskin for pointing this
out)
Second, the same issues appear with every major release of gcc
so far. gcc 2.7.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.8.x. gcc 2.8.x C++
is not binary compatible with egcs 1.0.x. egcs 1.0.x C++ is not binary
compatible with egcs 1.1.x. egcs 1.1.x C++ is not binary compatible with
gcc 2.95. gcc 2.95 C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 3.0.
Besides, it can easily be circumvented. Either link statically, or
simply distribute libstdc++ with your program and install it if necessary.
Since it has a different soname, it can coexist with other libstdc++ versions
without causing any problems.
Red Hat Linux 7 also happens to be the first Linux distributions using
the current version of glibc, 2.2.x. This update is not binary compatible with
older distributions either (unless you update glibc - there's nothing that
prevents you from updating libstdc++ at the same time), so complaining about
gcc's new C++ ABI breaking binary compatibility is pointless. If you want
to distribute something binary-only, link it statically and it will run
everywhere.
Someone has to be the first to take a step like this. If nobody dared
to make a change because nobody else is doing it, we'd all still be using
gcc 1.0, COBOL or ALGOL. No wait, all of those were new at some point...
- Most of gcc 2.96's perceived "bugs" are actually broken code
that older gccs accepted because they were not standards compliant - or, using
an alternative term to express the same thing, buggy.
A C or C++ compiler that doesn't speak the standardized C language is
a bug, not a feature.
In the initial version of gcc 2.96, there were a couple of other bugs.
All known ones have been fixed in the version from updates - and the version
that is in the current beta version of Red Hat Linux. The bugs in the initial
version don't make the whole compiler broken, though. There has never been
a 100% bug free compiler, or any other 100% bug free non-trivial program.
The current version can be downloaded
here.
- gcc 3.0, the current "stable" release (released quite some time
after Red Hat released gcc 2.96-RH), fixes some problems, but introduces many
others - for example, gcc 3.0 can't compile KDE 2.2 beta 1 correctly.
Until the first set of 3.0 updates is released, I still claim 2.96 is
the best compiler yet.
Trolling for GCC 2.96I heard some rumor about Oracle pushing an ERP solution at RedHat that involved WinNT, which started the bad blood between them.
Then, out comes RedHat Database, which would surely cause Oracle some displeasure even if it is no competetive threat.
Perhaps even a larger concern is Suse's use of ReiserFS. Red Hat has been screaming that fsck and other user-level tools for ReiserFS are tremendously substandard, and that ReiserFS corrupts itself under heavy load, to say nothing of the NFS problems (I don't know if these are fixed).
(Gee it would be nice to know which JFS RedHat is going to choose before I install any more XFS versions - perhaps it really will be ext3 after all.)
Why is Oracle coming to a different conclusion about ReiserFS? Granted, it's not that hard to restore a corrupted Oracle data file, but why have any question of risk?
There is more here than meets the eye.
he could have just accidently hit the o before the r :)
No chance. He was going for that zany ESR-loving hacker jargon file stylee..
Ah, I see my original post was marked "Overrated". The coward's moderation. If you think I'm trolling, call me a goddamn troll.
SuSE Oracle support page is
http://www.suse.com/en/support/oracle/<p>
See the LVM whitepaper there for some interesting SuSE-only things (although it's all opensource (GPL) stuff).
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.suse.de/~mha/
The original comment was correct and you are both wrong. For Oracle 9i, only SuSE is supported.
Also the idea of Oracle buying SuSE does make some sense. Oracle has seriously chopped down the number of future supported platforms and Linux/Intel is one of them.
Please don't take this as a bad sign. SuSE is just restructuring a bit and there is absolutely no signs of the company going under or whatever other gloomy future timothy has in mind for the company.
Merging with Mandrake is a ridiculous proposition and it's incredibly bad behaviour of a journalist (or someone acting in this role) to suggest something like this.
Bo Thorsen.
Disclaimer: I work for SuSE Labs, but I speak for myself.
It's not clear to me that the original poster was talking about gcc-2.96. If I'm not mistaken, Mandrake has used things like pgcc in the past.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
SuSe is the ONLY really good distro for the IBM s/390. Marist College has one that is pretty outdated (and hard to install) and Redhat has a beta (alpha?) version out, but SuSe is by far what most people seem to be using currently. Perhaps there is some incentive for IBM to bail them out (or cut them off and encourage RH to speed up their deployment of the s/390 port)
Finkployd
70 expendable workers? You just can't throw workers at a problem and expect everything to just organize. This is why so many companies tank.
Of course, I'm sure Slackware would have been getting along a lot _more_ nicely had they not put their store on a very slow ASDL line when their new release was announced on slashdot...
That's just dumb. It was bogged down for like 3 days, and even now it's very slow.
Slackware Store
You can copy the CDs all you want. What the license disallows is the selling of copied CDs or of works derived from YaST. You can hack up YaST all you want as well. The source code is there. In fact, YaST2 is a very nice framework for developing setups. You want to write a module that configures X package? Go for it.
I hate it when Slashdotters don't read licenses. Most haven't even read the GPL and go around telling untruths about it.
*sigh*
Sounds like you need to listen more to Linus and less to Stallman.
If you don't want to use SuSE then don't - there's room in the Linux world for more than one distro, and SuSE is extremely popular for good reason.
Go try RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, SuSE then come back and tell me with a straight face that they all provided the same bang for the buck to you, and were all of equal quality, etc.
actually right after the ipo might be a good time for acquisitions. if suse has alot of tools that can be adapted to enhance mandrake it might be a good idea. after the ipo mandrake should have alot of capital and will need something to invest in.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Go out and _buy_ the ISO!
/, and told Lilo to look there, based on the patching HOW-TO - SuSE 7.2 places the new kernel in /boot - so I had to simply repoint Lilo, and reboot to fix the issue - still have to rebuild the kernel anyhow, and customise it, cause I lost joystick support).
I recently bought the personal version of 7.2 - to use to update my 6.3 box. Being a relative newbie on Linux, I had my doubts and "fears" on doing the update (after all, it was a major version upgrade). I wasn't sure the update would work properly, or that something would break after reboot, or what...
I figured something would go wrong - how could it go smooth?
But you know something - it did! The update worked great - no problems at all. Reboot happened and everything was fine...
Ok, not everything was fine - everything worked and appeared OK - but I found that X4.0 hadn't replaced the old X, though KDE updated fine. The kernel didn't get updated either (that was my own fault, in a way - earlier I had patched my 2.2.13 kernal, that comes standard with SuSE 6.3, to 2.2.14, to fix a bug with the parallel port zip drive. I had placed the vmlinuz in
Even so, with all that - I am highly pleased with the results. I have updated a lot of my software, and KDE2 is a joy to use and see. I have a love/hate relationship with the NVidia drivers for my TNT card now (I was using the "reference" source drivers - or whatever they were - under X3 - but they don't work for 4) - they are faster, but I hate that damn logo - anybody know how to get rid of it (the only reference I found was something involving a hex edit patching of a binary - not something I really want to do).
I am really pleased. I loved the update so much, I really want to see how/what a virgin install is like, on a brand new system. Something tells me "simple as pie"...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I use LFS at home as you can build the lightest, fastest system that way (and it's not that big a deal if I screw something up on my own boxen), but I wouldn't consider anything other than SuSE for a business system. I've used SLS and Slackware in the past, I have Debian on an old Mac as it's the only game in town, and I appear to be stuck with Redh*t at work (until I take over as sysadmin, at least). From what I've seen, SuSE beats them all.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
In this past month's Linux World (or Linux Mag... I get both) there's a great interview with Dirk Hondel, premier SuSE dude. Pretty good stuff, Dirk assures us in the article that they are going strong. They are still a privately funded company, remember, so lack of profits today != investors backing out tomorrow. Also keep in mind that SuSE WAS profitable for the first few years of its existence. It's only been recently (and a result of expansion) that they've become less-than profitable. They'll be fine. Their distribution was the first to be better than Slackware and is years ahead of RedHat or Mandrake (sorry guys).
That said, Linux has never looked stronger. We now have FOUR browsers - Netscape, Mozilla, Galeon, and Konqueror. Plus plenty of Office apps. And I recently read another atricle that shows how Linux is taking over the graphics-workstation desktop (at Pixar, etc).
I can only hope that the current decline in the vitality of OSS companies is parallel to that of the entire tech industry, and nothing more.
Anyone have any input on this?
Both are RPM-based
I should damn well hope so. RPM 3.05 has been the Linux Standard base method of installing software for some time now, and at least 98% of production systems are RPM based according to Netcraft. Hence I doubt that's the basis to merge.
For some good insight into how SuSE does business, go out and buy (or stand in a bookstore and read) the August 2001 Linux Magazine article on pp 36-40. It is an interview with Dirk Hohndel, and he discusses where SuSE is and isn't profitable. He says that for the most part they have been profitable, but during the Linux hype in the stock market they spent a little too much, and now have to work on tightening up a bit.
I also have a flyer I got in the mail from SuSE (because I registered my 7.1) urging me to buy 7.2, and listing some of their other products. They have a $2500 Lotus Domino + SuSE package they sell (amongst other expensive products) and I imagine that if they can sell plenty of these to corporate customers then they probably won't be hurting too bad.
Many of the posts have been "Imminent Death of SuSE predicted!" posts. I think it is very silly to suggest that they are going to go under or have to merge. I think they have a very strong user base and I bet they'll come out fine.
Someone hasn't used Mandrake in a LONG time. Mandrake shifted all its admin tools (Which are far superior to any other distro's, in my opinion, especially when combined with Linuxconf) to GTK a LONG time ago, at least in 7.0.
SuSE is great.
At work the Linux boxes generally get Redhat, so I get an opportunity to experience RH's default Gnome install there.
At home, my first RH 4.2 install has been giving way to several revisions of SuSE, lately 7.1 Professional.
SuSE's default distro is nice since:
Finally, I actually buy real distros at full cost instead of iso image copies, since I like to support RH and SuSE, both of which have contributed significantly to the open software community in various ways. That RH employs Alan Cox and that SuSE writes paychecks for Andrea Arcangeli means I will continue to buy distros from both of those houses.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They only have 7.1, not 7.2
--
Free Mac Mini
Specifically, their YaST installer is NOT GPLed, it is under a proprietary license, making it illegal to copy cds. I've never used the distro because of this, so I don't know if any of their other software is non-GPLed. It's quite possible that it would be illegal for Mandrake to do what you describe.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Red Hat always takes a lot of crap for being "sell outs," but SuSE is the only distro company that has ever restricted redistribution. I don't understand why they don't take more crap for that. I, for one, will not be sad if SuSE goes under.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'd like to add a few remarks on this.
First, have a look at their web site. They announce to reduce headcounts in a socially acceptable way and in close cooperation with the empolyee's council (which for all practical means can here be compared to a union).
Announcing this now means that - if they are really fast in the HR department - they get contract terminations out this month. More likely it will be next month, since every single termination (or the whole package with all details) has to be agreed by the employee's council.
Since people here have usually 3 months notice on termination in their contracts (and, especially in the tech sector, 6 is not uncommon) thus the affected people will regularily have to leave earliest end of october of november.
But that's not all - an employee's council worth its name will ususally get a substantial severance package for anybody terminated. I'd be surprised if they didn't get at least an additional 2 or 3 month's pay as compensation.
Now, what does that all mean ?
First, expect noone to fall harshly into poverty anytime soon.
Second, Suse will probably not save a single dime this year by doing this. All they do is proactively reducing next year's cost (and, maybe, impress some analysts). So this is not, IMO a sudden panic measure but an act of careful planning for times getting harsher.
f.
Nothing besides the fact that it's not open-source. And I don't mean the "FSF definition of open-source", but the fact that you can't get the source for yast. Now, is it just me, or does someone else find it odd that open-source distribution would use a proprietary installer?
I liked SuSE until I found out that 7.0 shipped with a broken software raid. Now that's just wrong.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
(Well, okay, there are many other neat things about Debian, but this is one of them)
-- Agthorr
Only posts #35, #60, #80 #118 had anything useful to say that was really on topic.
#35: Voice of moderation, mostly non technical staff gets layed off. (portal.suse.de/en)
#60: Socially acceptable lay offs that don't save SuSE any money immedeately.
#80: "Just restructuring a bit", "going strong" from an employee of SuSE Labs
#118: SuSE is not publicly traded. Privately
funded. Was profitable from the beginning
and maybe grew a little too fastduring the
tech bubble.
The rest, were just doom'n'gloom sayers...
Come on, people. Not everything is going down hill. Some companys have a sound structure.
SuSE is not only in the distribution business, the do a lot of service to and have more products than "just" the distribution and stuffed animals.
Marcus
I can't say that I'm not upset about this news. I personally have never run SuSE on any of my boxes but I know people who have, and I have SuSE to thank for making X Servers a few years back that supported my hardware before XFree really caught up.
.com's to large scale corporations are announcing the same deal on a regular basis. The fact that SuSE is laying MORE people off is terrible, especially for the people being laid off. But what about the hundreds of thousands of people being laid off elsewhere? Cisco, Xerox, GM, to name a few. So I wouldn't take this news as earth-shaking, hailing the destruction of Linux (sorry, random Matrix plug), rather, I would view it as pretty sad to see some really great people getting laid off who helped make a really great product. Hopefully this whole economic mess will be over soon and we'll be seeing headlines that read "Hundreds Hired Into SuSE" or something.
However, this news can't be all that shocking. Countless numbers of companies - small one-officed
-Do or do not. There is no try.
SuSE is the only distro that is certified for use with Oracle. I doubt that Oracle would let them die. I expect to see SuSE become part of Oracle.
Whoever named the SuSE emblem "Geeko" should be caught and shot NOW. And I hate that fucking penguin too. It's far too smug-looking.
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
I wouldn't expect a merge between Suse and Mandrake.
I don't know what the people at Suse think about that idea, but I do know that Mandrake consists of Free/GNU software. It's free to download. And they want to keep it that way. Over the last few years Suse has slowly been moving into proprietary software. Yast and Yast2 are under non-free licenses, or at least, you're not free to resell it, it's non-GNU.
I don't know the license of their email-server, but i assume that's also non-GNU.
MandrakeSoft is not interested in non-GNU software.
I'm not planning on a flamewar between licenses, but it does matter under which license software is being shipped.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
With 7.2, you get nice TrueType font support, autodetection of IDE CDR writers, good USB support, and a really simple install.
Anyway, we all vote with our wallets, and as someone who used to spend a small fortune every year buying software at EggHead, CompUSA, etc., paying for a $30 distro evry 6-9 months, and the occasional small donations to FSF and Debian is way less expensive, and generally feels better.
-- Mark Watson -- Open Source and Content at www.markwatson.com
Okay. Both Mandrake and SuSe use GPLed software, meaning that at anytime, Mandrake can take SuSE's work and integrate it into Mandrake. This leaves the question: What exactly is there for Mandrake to merge with or "buy"? Now I can understand someone like IBM buying a Linux company for the employees and experience, but in this case, Mandrake can merely hire more people and use SuSE's stuff.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Might be worth checking out, has alot of great articles on there.
:-).
But no-one seems to mention it much, which is unfortunate.
http://portal.suse.de/en/
Check it out
StarTux
Presumably this means that SuSe will now concentrate on actually making money rather than just making a distro.
Tim
Please, lets not assume that layoffs equals a company going downhill.
As we well know, in todays competitive environment, a company has to adapt. I have seen in the past companies improving the quality of their products after a layoff. How can we outsiders tell what these layoffs represent ? We simply can't.
We really don't know what kind of people are being kicked off. How can we be sure that they were not getting the the way ? Or maybe SuSe just plans to handle some positions to third party companies, which is not always a good thing, but is not always bad either.
A think people that see these layoffs as a bad sign are a little ahead of themselves. We should wait and see what happens.
---
morcego
I don't want to see SuSE die anymore then the next man, but this condition in the Linux market is good I think. You put out 10 competing distros in the market. Consumers say what they like and don't like. Distributions react by modifying their product. Over time, consumers begin to get attached to a particular distribution. Other distributions suffer.
So, what's left at the end of this? Less distributions. As less popular (or less well-funded) distributions go under or get bought out, the Linux distributions begin to look more alike. A standard emerges for the distributions. The superior product comes out on top. A product that the consumers have voted on (with dollars) as the product that has the features they want, the tools they want, the support they want, the
resources they want, etc. The Linux market has behaved like every other free market.
Us slashdotters seem to be the free market types. No interference, may the best distribution win. So SuSE is hurting right now. The market doesn't lie, so it seems to imply people are looking elsewhere. I believe this is good for Linux overall. Linux companies have to compete like real companies, develop a superior product, and offer their customers more. Maybe SuSE will come out on top in the end, or perhaps not. But if SuSE takes a buyout from another Linux manufacture and the result is one less distribution (which will hopefully combine the best aspects of both systems), I believe the Linux community is benefited. The end result of this will tend towards a Linux distribution for the masses, which is exactly what the open source advocacy really needs.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
SuSE is probably the best distro. around! If you want to spend all year installing then debian is fine. It's hardly a viable distro for non-techies though. RedHat and Mandrake put out lame broken packages based on non-standard compilers. IMHO if everyone used SuSE the world would be a better place. The news about the layoffs really is sad.
Well,
the real trouble (in Germany) is, if I got the stories right, _not_ the fact that companies don't want to hire people. People don't want to get their hands dirty. Why? Consider you get about 500 DM cash on hand a month, housing support (up to paying your entire appartment w/heating and all the works), reduced telephone rates, reduced prices for a lot of stuff you buy, "Kleidergeld" (money to by clothes) every two months. For what? Being registered as unemployed in Germany (it actually is much higher for some time after you loose your old job). Plus, do some "unofficial" work here and there, if you do it well, add another 1000,- a month. As I said, no taxes. If you are married, and/or have children, of course you get more.
Now do the math: How much would I have to earn pre-tax to sustain the same level of quality of life? Well, you'll easily come to figures around 2500-3000 DM, if it's enough. That means you're working full time and you, after all is deducted, don't have a penny more in your pocket than if you wouldn't work at all. Thank you.
BTW: Im paying taxes here. Not nice. 50% goes off to the state.
Anno.
When one says soda, he thinks Coca-Cola. When one says Fast Food, he thinks McDonalds.
.NET to it? XP wouldn't be so horrible if all the great Win2000 programmers were working on LinuXP, and all the crapass VB and Windows 98 coders were making crapass Windows Millenium and Windows XP.
When one says Linux, he thinks RedHat.
To be more than just an underground Distro, you've got to make money, have a company, like RedHat. They posted a Profit! Sure, I'm sure they'll do some layoffs, but they're doing pretty well.
i've heard some call them the MS of Linux, they might be similar in some ways. But until Microsoft LinuXP comes out in a year or two, RedHat will be on top of the market.
Don't believe me about Microsoft preparing it's own Linux? Why would it be 'porting'
Zoot!
Does TurboLinux still have that crap text based installer? That's what buried that thing, along with poor advertising.
Suse? Green stinks, and it's too European, too German.
IBM needs to make eLinux or something....they could take this thing, but they're scared it'll ruin their AS/400 and OS/390 business. They could bury MS for once and for all!
Mandrake is nice, but it's really just RH with some glitter.
Debian? Slack? Nerds only!
We all seen what happened to Corel, no need for comment...
Storm? Gone.
Caldera was alright, but who knows what happened over there. They merged with SCO which was a laugh too.
This is an amazing pity -- I recently moved from redhat on my laptop to SuSE, and I've been nothing but completely satisfied. 7.2 (the new SuSE release) went on amazingly cleanly, and this on a weird box that took me a few days with redhat to make work. Their updates are seamless, the DVD install was great (I did most of it in an airplane over greenland), and I've had absolutely no problems. It's got me about ready to ditch my Ultra 10 completely :)
Too many competitors in a market will result in low product prices and nobody making any money. When it is like this, it is really good for the consumer but does nothing for the companies. Once we get fewer companies, each with enough market share to maintain itself or actually make money, fewer companies will go out of business and more will actually try to enter the market(potential profit with growth.) This is also what is happening with dot-coms. Companies just can't exist in small markets with super-competition.
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
The original poster managed to turn this discussion into an impossible (at least for the near future) merger between SuSE and MandrakeSoft. It seems that most people forgot the headlines: SuSE Announces More Layoffs.