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SuSE CEO's Two-Distro World
FrankoBoy writes "CRN has an interview with SuSE CEO Richard Seibt in which he claims such things as 'Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else.' Another example of this kind of corporatespeak can be found in another interview he did with ZDNet last week. DistroWatch has an article about all this in its current weekly newsletter."
about recommending SuSE to Linux newbs.
A blog like any other.
That's funny, I'm in the process of installing Gentoo right now. There are a significant number of channels packed with users. Perhaps people should look around and see what's really going on.
http://www.gentoo.org
SCO isn't a company. Debian and Gentoo aren't companies. Is Mandrake? Is there any other companies out there rolling their own distro?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
RedHat and SuSE and SCO!!!
My rights don't need management.
I cant beleive that the guy said that linux is about suse and redhat . SuSe linux is surpased by a number of distributions out there. I am just shocked that SuSe would say that . I mean there are many many linux distributions out there and from a whole sort of community prespective SuSe is fairly low .
Right now, when Linux needs to unite more than ever because of the FUD SCO is releasing, here comes this guy saying stuff like that. Maybe he should go read the cathedral and the bazaar.
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
... not two-distro. IMO (not trolling either) Red Hat and SuSE both suck -- although SuSE sucks a little less. I use Slackware on my laptop and Debian for any server tasks, and neither of those distros are produced by a commercial entity.
Somehow I don't mind this kind of megalomaniacal self-important delusion when it's coming from a company like SUSE that actually has a meaningful, usable, well-crafted, well-supported product that time and effort was put into.
Oh well. To me, Linux still means "Debian and Gentoo, and maybe someday I'll consider trying SUSE, but probably not." Redhat and Mandrake are dead to me. ^_^
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I've had problems trying to run Redhat on anything low end, mostly hardware incompatibilities, but also unexplainably long pauses without any disk activity.
So I use Slackware. No problems yet and great low end hardware support. Easy to administer too.
I haven't used linux long enough to say my opinion matters though.
<sarcasm> We all know Linux is all about SCO </sarcasm>
MoFscker
The support costs are high.
- 1.html
And if you buy RH AS, then you have to agree to the following license:
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_2
And that's even ok with GPL. So you can't increase the number of RH AS servers without paying them for support for additional servers.
But I would leave out Red Hat and SuSE too. Linux doesn't "mean" any companies! Linux means a stable, reliable, nimble, free OS.
:)
Of course, my years of using and contributing to Debian (which is not a company) may have skewed my viewpoint somewhat.
If we're talking about enterprise support, there really isn't that much out there.
And the Internet means two companies, AOL and MSN, nobody else.
funny... I thought that Debian and Mandrake were alive and kicking...
and Slackware has as strong of a following as ever.
hell, I find slackware to be the only choice for embedded system prototyping or dedicated things like a freevo box or other things you need to be able to strip out the crud to get a fast small system.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's my view that the industry has decided there is one main operating system competitor to Microsoft, and that is Linux. Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors.
All he's saying is that in the corporate market most of the support is related to these two companies.
Personally I think he's wrong, but he's not trying to deny the existance of other distros or anything.
Does the general /. public know what is going with Novell and Ximian? (apart from the Netware admins). This is what one Netware admin had to say:
... This is a competitive advantage to Windows because this is not something you can get with [Windows].
Novell needs a new loading OS kernel to build Netware on. DOS certainly has reached it limitations with scalability and security so linux is an obvious solution. They'll still maintain their same environment and NDS tho. But scalability is their main push. E-Directory (NDS) loads on WinNT/2k/2K3 and linux.... but keeping it in its native environment is still the most stable of course.
And the CEO's answer to a question:
CRN: What do you think of Novell buying Ximian? Does this bode well for Linux adoption on the desktop? Seibt: I would take this as a fact that Novell is taking Linux very, very seriously, and it's another fact that they are not concerned about any lawsuit. They simply believe that Linux is something that is a huge value for the customer. Think about what CA [Computer Associates] just did. They did a survey with their customers about why customers are deploying Linux. [Customers] named five reasons: performance, reliability, scalability, security and total cost of ownership, which came in fifth. What does this mean? Everybody is talking about total cost of ownership, and no doubt this is very important, because all of us have to reduce IT budgets. But customers named four other reasons. These reasons are strategic reasons why to deploy Linux.
Well what?
Go anywhere where you can see some statistics about Linux distros, and you'll see that red hat, mandrake, debian, gentoo and knoppix are more used than crappy closed SUSE. They should grow up!
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
C'mon -- the guy is a non-native English speaker and the context makes it perfectly clear what he's saying. He said that from the perspective of commercial Unix vendors, there are two Linux distributions they actively consider.
I'm a Gentoo and Yellow Dog user, but the shrieking in just the first 10 comments is completely misplaced.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
He's saying that as far as the corporate world goes, Linux == RedHat | SuSE. If you buy a pre-installed Linux box from some IT vendor somewhere, it will have RedHat or SuSE on it. This is basically true.
So don't jump the gun on tearing this guy a new asshole.
I'll stay with the turtle (Debian), 'cause we all know what happens at the end. The turtle poops all over the hare (SuSe). /me makey jokey joke/
/joeyo
2^5
Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors.
Thats bullshit.
HP/Compaq bundles Mandrake.
And certifies systems for Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, and TurboLinux.
If HP isn't considerd a "large IT vendor," who is?
The unofficial
It would be nice if we could get Linus, RMS and ESR to together pen a statement (together, so that their individual quirks will roughly even each other out ;) ) stating that Linux isn't just about two companies, or even about companies at all. Linux existed before any companies were supporting it, and it will exist afterwards.
And if he doesn't take back this silly, new-wave corporo-capitalist nonsense ("Linux is about two companies"? What, is he learning economics from Bill Gates or Darl McBride?), we should simply boycott SuSE.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Does this sound like the actual article text? I don't think so!
It is more insightful, informative, funny, and underrated than most slashbot comments and articles.
There are always groups of people who swear Maxtor blows and WD never fails, or Redhat installs on any hardware and Mandrake does not work on any.
The bottom line is, most distros work on most hardware without significant problems. There will always be fanboys who cry for years because they had one or two bad experiences with a Distro.
Especially about red hat. Red hat is the closest to a profitable, properly run, professional company in the linux world. Suse is quite respectable too, and they have a great product to back it up. While other linux distros do matter, they don't show up on the professional radar for most people.
Arguing about whether or not to use GNU in your name, or which GUI is more "free" than the other is irrelevant to most companies. They want good products, not irrelevant nerd-speak. Red Hat and Suse have forged past the anarchistic free-for-all attitude of hackers and made Linux much more approachable. Anyone who says otherwise is probably just jealous of their success...
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Granted there are all kinds of linux flavors and distro under the sun, but walking down the street in anytown USA you ask any given person "hay you ever heard of linux?" or "could you tell us the name of a linux distribution/company you have heard of?" and most common answers will be Redhat, Suse, and Mandrake - in that order.
Red Hat has pushed Linux into the spot light more than any other company has - ok this is where I get flamed - but honestly what companies other than Red Hat have targeted more than the fat-guru-programmer stereotype nix user. Gentoo and Slackware definaetly don't expect anyone but a power user to even touch there distros. Mandrake trys to be a friendly nix distro, but they constantly beg their users to donate money and can barely keep from going bankrupt. Red Hat and Suse are the only 2 companies that have successfully made money selling linux to both corporations and home users, and of the 2 Red Hat is by far more "KNOWN"
Ave Molech Setting
Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-PgDn, Ctrl-V....
Couldn't you at least strip out the links and crap near the top?
Even more interesting is when you consider SCO just hired an ex-SuSE VP of International Business, to be the VP of SCOSource.
And that McBride comes from being a VP at Novell...
The SCO Group Announces Appointment of Gregory Blepp
There are the "big two" and the underdogs. such as vim and emacs, kde and gnome. Beyond them are the underdogs such as windowmaker, nano, gedit, *box, xedit and twm.
Debian/Gentoo vs. Redhat/Suse/Mandrake.
But then I realized he was referring to "companies". Linux is the way it is because it was made by people who care, and the same can be said (possibly to a lesser extent) about other unices(Linux walks, talks, and quacks like UNIX. So does BSD/QNX/etc.)
Don't get me wrong, I like nearly all Linux distros for the guts beneath them. I just prefer Debian over Redhat/Suse because of the complete lack of commercialization; I can get ALL of the available software in the same interface, with nothing held back "for paying customers".
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It's my view that the industry has decided there is one main operating system competitor to Microsoft, and that is Linux. Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors.
This kind of polarization is usual behaviour when you have several smaller opponents, as a example: political parties in "non-bipartidist" systems use it frequently.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Please read the above post and spot the obvious trolling inserted.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
strikes at /. once again...w00t
2, and I guess 3 commercial entities (IE COMPANIES) produce Linux distro's. Lots of other distro's available from many other sources but NOT COMMERCIALLY PRODUCED....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Does anyone here actually run Suse? What are the desktop benefits against something like Red Hat?
We (not me, but the Linux test migration team at my company) have been looking at the possibility of changing to their Exchange replacement, but have not yet completed our tests. Are there other folks who are making this migration and if so, how is it going?
Don't bother replying with crap like "Run Gentoo!", because I know sweet FA about in-depth Linux stuff. There. That's honesty for you.
Wow, a bit high and might of him to declare such a thing, perhaps?
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Might as well begin the linux distro flame-fest... SuSe? I had the unfortunate displeasure of installing it one one of my machines, I couldn't stand it for a month. Isn't it only the newbs who like those glorified menus wrapped around the config files? Why would any IT organization want to add another layer of cruft like YaST on their systems? It's just another possible point of failure. And, of course, it makes it so you can't use most of the documentation on the web, since most of it assumes you edit the files manually. So why not use MS if you can't really fix things when they break. Why anyone thinks they need a distro other than Slackware is beyond me.
I think too much is being read into this comment. For one, it's obvious English is not this guy's first language from the text. Secondly, he seemed to be addressing Linux as it pertained to larger corporations. As far as large companies go, Suse and Red Hat likely ARE the only two distros they're really concerned with. They're the ones that have the parterships with the likes of IBM and Sun after all. He's not delusional - he's just not talking about what everyone seems to think he is.
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
Big money in getting a 3% sliver of that 10% market share! Am I right?
Am I right, people?
There is no quote with systems anal integrators in the article text posted here...it is a blantant case of copyright violation, but it's not a troll about anal integrators...
He did not say there will only be two Linux distributions.
He said "There will be no third distribution that will be SUPPORTED by the large IT vendors."
That's his estimate on what the corporate world will support / believe in. Remember, he's looking on this from a corporate perspective where you get support etc., not a free O/S view.
Don't forget that Suse is pat of the United Linux distro (along with SCO unfortunately).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
You also have apparently not used SuSE much, nor read all the articles about how popular it really is. It's the Red Hat of Europe,
Obviously a commie pinko bastard! He's dissing the US!
You are dumb.
quote was taken out of context - SuSE's just saying that corporate IT is focusing on just two distributions.
Don't know about you - but I see very few other distributions out there on corporate boxes...
Okay, everybody calm down.
First of all, I really don't think that this interview was very interesting.
What seems to have gotten it onto Slashdot was his "only two distros" comment. However, what the person submitting the story left out was one minor detail: context.
He said HP, Sun, etc., are mostly backing off from pushing their own proprietary operating systems and opting to push Linux-based products. In that context, there are two highly relevant Linux distributions: Redhat and SuSE.
Can you name another distro with the resources to provide support to a major hardware vendor deploying Linux?
Isn't it amazing how much less interesting and inflammatory his comment seems with a little context surrounding it?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
The most common answer will be "what the hell are you talking about?"
All he's saying is that in the corporate market most of the support is related to these two companies. Personally I think he's wrong, but he's not trying to deny the existance of other distros or anything.
If you look at this, it's wrong no matter how you interpret it. Literally, he left out a damned big company - IBM. Yes, they use Red Hat's stuff, but to say "Linux means two companies - Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else" is just flat wrong on that basis.
If you want to be assume he meant distros, then obviously he left out like 50.
You would have to interpret that as "companies who release their own distros under their own name" for that to make any sense, but by that time, it's irrelevant. The major players aren't the companies making the distros, it's those like IBM getting it on machines. Among companies with distros, only Red Hat (not SuSE!) has had any real impact doing that. SuSE's penetration is far less, especially outside Deutschland.
So, to me, the only sense in which his statement is true is that in which it's barely relevant. Sorry to SuSE, but they have nowhere near the impact of Red Hat or IBM.
Ultimately, he's trying to sound as if SuSE is half of the non-MS world, and that's nowhere near the case
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I thought the only incentive to buying SuSe was the free lemonparty that came with each box set.
Slashdot.org -- Quality Journalism.
I am really sick of watching these corporate politicians try to yank more money from the public for projects that began as free. It is disgusting that any companies out there would try to base a profit off of Linux distribution sales. It's even less likely that after reading this I will ever even attempt at purchasing, downloading, or wasting my time with Red Hat OR SuSE. I am a relatively new user to linux, but have only been using Slackware. Many people boast it's stability, many people blame evolution for the faults it continues to slip into each generation of this distro. I will never again attempt at installing Gentoo, Red Hat, or SuSE, mostly because the bloated methods used to install mean that I may not be getting what I actually want. I am not about bashing other types of OS' regardless of who might own a distribution company... and I'll say this much. Try it, and if you dont like it, don't use it. I was never really happy with the bloated SuSE to begin with, so it's kind of a relief that I have another justification to line up behind my own personal experiences... just a few words of wonderment from this linuxchick....
The funny thing is that I actually did try Suse the other day. I downloaded and burned their "Live CD" as part of a lecture. I was very impressed at how well it worked. It really was a no fuss deal. Like you I'll put up with a little meglomania for that. What harm can he really do to free softare? Who really needs large IT vendors? The future is free.
He also says lots of good stuff too. He slams SCO and easily dances around all their FUD. He's creating value and sees himself as a big institutional player. Good for him. No free softare based system can be as ugly or as abusive as Microsoft was.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So, lookes like SeSE has found SCO's secret stash, and/or borrowed Steve Jobs's reality distortion field.
Mandrake makes a decent all-around box (server or desktop), Slackware makes a great server, Debian has its' following, etc.
It doesn't matter whether Red Hat and SUSE are most popular right now, maybe they deserve to be.
What's most important is that with Linux there is no way that they can prevent any other company that decides to step up and bring a distro to market.
This fact will keep them on their toes via the omnipresent shadow of the unknown competitor just around the corner and it means that even if they decide to abandon Linux ten years from now, any of the other distros can come in a take up the slack.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Is this true of Lincoln, Gandhi, Bonaparte, Hitler, da Vinci, Jesus?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Admittedly, this guy is leaning out of the window here. However, the industry -- in this case meaning not computer vendors but IT companies wanting to use computers for administrating/performing their work, is so far used to Windows, and may not always be forgiving when it comes to quirks that geek distros like Debian, Gentoo and Slackware tend to have. While in the hands of a dedicated power user, these may be far superior to SuSE and RedHat, in the hands of even a computer-experienced, intelligent linux-newbie, they bomb.
Having appeased the geeks (I like Debian a great deal, trust me), what does SuSE(my current OS) have to offer? Easy, smooth installation, flawless autodetection -- as far as I know -- and an acceptable configuration tool in the form of YaST. On first boot, you get a good KDE install, with the important stuff, like OpenOffice and such integrated, good menu structure and MIME type settings. SuSE's weakest points are lack of SuSE rpms for a lot of programs, and the fact that changes to configuration files may be overwritten by SuSEconfig, which runs after every major system change. However, for someone who either wants a smoothly running system, or is proficient enough to disable SuSEconfig and compile some programs themselves, SuSE is quite a nice distro. For those reasons, it may be much more attractive for companies than tweak distros.
Divide et impera!
While many vendors do support other distributions than the big two (RH & SuSE) this is mostly on the desktop. Support on the server side for large servers is pretty much restricted to these two. This is true for hardware also If you want support for larger SMP's, SAN, etc there are not many drivers for other distros. Usually you can just go ahead and try, but if something does not work the support line will tell you to replace your distro xxx with RH/SuSE where thei support it.
I've been involved in quite a few new Linux customer projects. All the time third party software (Oracle, SAP, DB2, etc) was involved as well. The only distros which are *certified* to run this stuff are Rh and SuSE. And customers do want certified installations !
Personally I'm happily running debian and gentoo, but I haven't come across commercial installation of these distributions yet.
Markus
according to netcraft, if linux means 2 things, it is RedHat and Debian :)
All press about the management of Lindows, points towards them being interested in bettering linux. Mandrake caters to it's consumers and redhat is a company that gives back to it's community. Suse seems to be out only for their benefit and while they might make a good product, I don't want to support their business style. Which is why, even though they may make the best desktop linux environment, I run and monitarily support Mandrake.
I do security
Well basically if you see there are two types of distributions. Well one type mainly to make money out of with easy but sometimes crappy arch(example:- dependency resolution with rpm) second type is out of love for the "process" of linux. well yeah to put it short one treats linux as a product and other as a "process"( http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5057755.html ). But its total crap to say that only those two would be supported by the IT industry.
...especially where the PHB factor is low. I also use a lot of Mandrake myself, especially as a recommendation to others, 'coz the ease-of-use (installing, using and maintaining) is unsurpassed (well... Debian can be easier to maintain :-).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Can anyone speculate why scox stock is up 21% today (to 12.66)?
...except the fur SuSE part.
[Half-smiley.]
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
This is excactly the meaning of the statement.
It has nothing to do with desktop distros.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I'm not so sure about that. I think it was taken out of (or beyond its) context, although I do find the sentiment somewhat brusque. The companies that *are* starting to distribute linux on servers and now desktops are working mainly with Red Hat and Suse, who make most of their money from support services the corporations rely upon. That's just a fact right now - corps want another corp they can bitch at. If they were smart, they'd bring in a few savvy admins, use a free distro and pay *them* for support. But there's that whole "If they were smart" condition, applied to corporate IT no less...
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Yes, the comment is in reference to desktops but it's in reference to desktops in a corporate environment. If you're a company deploying Linux in the US, you buy Red Hat. I'd bet that they have 90% or more of the corporate Linux market.
I don't know if SuSE is in the same position in Europe or not, so I don't know if the quote is accurate over there. It's accurate over here.
(And for what it's worth, I don't run either. I run Mandrake desktops and Debian servers on my LAN. But I'm not a corporate customer either.)
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Good Day
XML causes global warming.
Here's another comment refuting your claim, with links.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Mandrake is a product of MandrakeSoft.
UnitedLinux is the parent company of SUSE, the European arm which produces SUSE Linux. There is also the Asian arm, TurboLinux, and the South American/Latin arm, Conectiva. Yep, all these major distributions fall under the same parent company. So you're pretty accurate in asserting that there's only a few big players as far as corporations go.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
Xandros, Libranet - Debian based. Xandros is a super-newbie-friendly distro.
Lycoris - Caldera/SCO (/bitter taste in mouth)
Linux MLD7 (Japan)
TurboLinux
Yellowdog
etc...
Okay someone help me compare distros to music:
RedHat: Mainstream
SuSE: Classical
Debian: Folk
Slackware: Rock
Mandrake: Country
Gentoo: Techno/Pop
FreeBSD: Heavy Metal
NetBSD: generic drum rythms
OpenBSD: tranquil, stress-relief
SCO: Satanic
The unofficial
Noticed that SCO stock is up over 20 percent today, yet there hasn't been any significant news. I predict that tomorrow, there will be a new earth-shattering decree from our pals at SCO.
If the SEC isn't investigating these assholes, I don't know why.
After seeing all the outraged comments on here ("Waddyamean he thinks my copy of Gentoo isn't a distro?!"), I'm surprised, because I think he's right (at least, in terms of corporate distros). Before any holy warriors mod me down for saying this, I should provide a disclaimer...OK...here goes...I am a distro bigot, and I would never use anything but Slackware (if it's my decision to make), because all the major distros are disgustingly bloated. Slackware -- it rocks. RH/SuSE/etc -- they suck. Just the facts, ma'am. *ducks*
Now that we've got that important fact out of the way, let's look at Oracle. Last I checked, Slackware, Gentoo, and other distros that lean further toward the hobbyist/programmer/hacker end of things were not supported by Oracle -- it was only SuSE and RedHat. It's not just Oracle -- as a general rule, if you find some proprietary software that they're trying to make a Linux port of, and they name a distro, it's about 90% likely to "support" RedHat and maybe 40% likely to "support" SuSE.
Reason for the quotes around "support" would be that most of the time, a specific distro is not needed. It's the same kernel and most of the same FS setup (well, Slackware's init scripts are a little bit bett^H^H^H^Hdifferent, since they follow BSD instead of SysV). However, naming the distro supplies a corporation with the perfect ass-covering if it's something their tech-support hasn't been trained on. "What, you don't use RedHat? Well, I'm sorry, but we can't support your software. Even though you paid us $5,000 this quarter for gold-level support. It's broken -- you fix it."
It comes of picking something very specific to train $6.50/hr helpdesk personnel who aren't likely to investigate and learn a new distro. Plus a reason I can sympathize a bit more with: If the customer is breathing down the company's neck to fix this problem that they had with a homebrew distro some BOFH in the customer's IT dept. crafted, it will cost a lot of time, money, and perhaps contracts (as the customer gets more impatient) to get it fixed. Better to go with an extremely common standard, even though they are the lowest common denominator in terms of distros.
So I agree -- to the corporate world, there are only SuSE and RedHat distros. The rest just aren't supported.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
part of that United Linux thing? Wonder what happened to them.
Remember, SuSE was in bed with SCO.
Personally, I wouldn't trust SuSE's CEO to make very good business partners or decisions. His comments carry little weight with me.
I tried installing redhat 9 on an OLD machine (amd k-5 cpu on an old 486 mobo, really old and weird stuff) redhat 9 said 'redhat does not support this hardware' and refused to install. slack 9 installed without a hitch, and only choked on the old sony CDROM ( old non-ide thing - the driver started crashing the machine)
After all, if it's your responsibility to maintain the system, you're going to stick with what you're familiar with, and in North America, that's NOT SuSE. Nor in a large part of the rest of the world. China, India, other parts of Europe and Asia ...
If you had to set up a corporate lan w. linux desktops, you'd probably opt for the same setup you're using now (Debian servers, Mandrake desktops). Why? Because you're familiar with it, you know it works, and there's tons of others using it :-) In such a scenario, SuSE doesn't enter into the equation.
He's right when he says there'll be only two distro companies, but Suse won't be among them.
It's gonna be RedHat and Mandrake.
And on the non-commercial side, it's gonna be Gentoo and Debian.
Suse's slowly but certainly losing the race. They will sill be strong on their german home market for a while, but even there, people are switching over to Mandrake and Gentoo fast. In the end, suse won't pack it. But he will be right about two distro companies
What a dumbass thing to say, it's almost worthy of a SCO executive it's so stupid.
Say goodbye to Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, etc.
The SuSe Uberschmuck has spoken!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Basically, this is another non-story.
- Lycoris Desktop
- Lindows
- SuSE
In the past, they also carried Mandrake.My beef with the whole 2-companies thing is that you'd think he'd be a little more sensitive, given how:
- everybody's up in arms over the stupidity SCO is pulling
- SCO and SuSE being partners in UnitedLinux
- SCO just this week appointing a new vp snatched from SCO
So, SCO says they own Linux, SuSE says it's just them and RedHat --- man, you'd think they were a couple of kids doing a circle jerk around an old copy of National Geographic or something, they come off just SO full of thmselves.given the recent SCO events, UnitedLinux is dead.
But Suse's future depended entirely on a success of UnitedLinux. Suse is in many respects like SCO: they don't really believe in open source, but only in closed source pay-ware. Thus, the suse administration program YaST is closed source. In the end, they will sink with their partner SCO.
Eventually, the distro world is gonna be:
- RedHat (corporate users who think they need phone support)
- Mandrake All people who want to use linux but don't want to edit config files by hand
- Gentoo All those who love editing config files in emacs and vi, and to spend their time compiling kernels and wanking on how fast their PC compiles it
- Debianfor all those who think it should be named gnu instead of linux and that Stallman is good and Linus is bad, and who choose their distro on ideology rather than on rational aspects
You gave me a good laugh, thanks :-) Mind you, SCO just picked up one if its' veeps from SuSE.
Gregory Blepp, vp in charge of SCOsource
Hey, since SCO doesn't get the Open Source paradigm, maybe he'll end up w. open sores :-)
he's just trying to say that suse and redhat are the only 2 that the industry is worried about.
Suse is a corporate enitity, which makes other corps that much more likely to deal with them. The 2-distro comment is bunk in the common market, but in the corporate market it's spot-on.
Sounds like a jerk to me too, but like the man sez, it's corporatespeak. No matter what happens in the corporate world, we'll always have Slackware and Gentoo and which is fine by me, although if Red Hat and/or Suse can keep working well with the corps, then that's a good thing too. When was the last time you had a beer and listened to heavy metal with a corp exec? Hmm??
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Your quote is also out of relevant context since you fail to continue with the rest. Here is the relevant snippet:
/. story submission which quotes Seibt as: "Linux means two companies: RedHat and SuSE, and nobody else." Obviously, Linux does not mean two companies, it doesn't mean any company, Linux is just a kernel.
It's my view that the industry has decided there is one main operating system competitor to Microsoft, and that is Linux. Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors. And from that perspective, even Novell decided not to compete anymore on operating systems. They now migrate all of their applications to Linux. This is a two-horse race between Linux and Windows. [emphasis mine]
So, there! He's giving his opinion about distributions that will be supported by "large IT vendors". He is also talking about Novell bailing out of OS competition. This is a corporate environment.
What is even more out of context is
If you want more, read the question thas was asked as well, and read it carefully, not just copy and paste. The question was:
But is it Unix or Windows that's being used less because of Linux? And will there be a shift in the future toward Linux replacing one or the other? For instance, as Linux on the desktop becomes more prevalent, will it be Windows that's more at risk?
The first question is: What OS is Linux displacing more right now: Unix or Windows? The second question is: As Linux gets more popular on the desktop, what OS will it displace more in the future?
In response to these questions he mentions HP, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, and SCO, out of which his vendor analysis comes out. It is obvious he is talking about corporate server environments supported by "larte IT vendors"!
You fucking idiot. The next sentence right after what you cut out provides the necessary context. That one about support from "large IT vendors". Depending on your definition of large, he has a pretty good point.
Which means that I, or anyone else can come out with my own distro anytime I want!
THAT's what Linux means. Nothing else.
I use SuSE because I think it's one of the best distros, but SuSE's attitude is a little off-putting especially with the whole SCO thing going on.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
LittleSnitch solves this very problem.
:)
It monitors and controls an individual application's access to network resources: in essense, you can write "firewall" rules for individual applications, applying to each one a different measure of trust.
A lot of people below were bemoaning the ipfw-based solutions, since they don't work... which is true
LittleSnitch is a Mac OS X application, but, I'm positive GNU/Linux and Windows applications exist to do the same thing.
"Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors."
Tough to argue with that.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
I'm in the process of installing Gentoo right now
How long does it take? SuSE, Redhat, Debian, can be installed and be running pretty damn fast these days. Shouldn't you stop posting on Slashdot and finish the install? LOL
Interested in sharing this time....
Did someone turn off Suse's Reality Engine again?
I can rememebr being at trade shows and hearing Suse\s sales droid babble on about how they where the first linux distro. Totally ingnoring the fact that YYgdrisal(sp) and SLS truely came first. Once they were doing it right next to the Slackware
and RH booths.
Yet another example of how crappy this industry has become.
One would think that the people running companies nowadays learnd their ethics from the quite excellent examples set by all the poeple who ran companis into the ground in the late '90's
Suse is a fine distro... but C'mon!
how is united linux doing?
The lunatic is in my head
there should be no debate about it and no one should be taking offense...
he was talking about companies, most likely through a thick german accent ([as evidenced] by the [liberal] use of [brackets])... a lot of stuff he could have been more clear about perhaps with a better mastery of the english language.
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
Seibt wants us to fall into the same trap everyone else seems to be falling into lately, that Linux (or Gnu/Linux) means RedHat, or SuSE. It is neither. There is no such thing as a RedHat OS, or a SuSE OS.
Large IT vendors will support whatever you want them to support, as long as you're willing to pony up the bucks. Place an order w. IBM for 1000 thinkpads w. Mandrake, they'll be quite happy to take your money. And your hardware is still warrantied. Last I looked, IBM was a large IT vendor.
Because of the terminology he was talking about. He was talking about significant companies. Not significant software. Not significant distros. Not what was significant about package-foo 2929.222 coming out.
Indeed, RedHat and SuSE are the most import Linux companies.
Only RedHat and SuSE proved to be able to offer solutions acceptable by enterprises. Other companies started as something like: "Hey, we like Linux and we maybe could make money with it", and some other distros are not focused for corporate use.
Also, I'm pretty sure that United Linux will not succeed, and SuSE is wasting money and time by trusting in it. They should improve their market acceptance by consolidating their solutions and finding OEM partners (I don't mean some PC maker to bundle their linux on them). For the future, I can see only two or three companies controlling the enterprise Linux market.
FreeBSD is also acceptable by enterprises requirements, but only when they employ capable staff and have non-alienated steering managers. Unfortunatelly, this is not very common. The only problem is that FreeBSD won't have as much power as RedHat. I see no reasons for Oracle not being supported on FreeBSD, except for the narrow-mindness around.
It also includes service vendors such as CGI, who, as long as you're willing to spend the coin, will work with whatever you're willing to throw at them.
You think a large computer-services company is going to refuse a contract because you specified a distro other than RedHat or SuSE? They understand that RedHat and SuSE are just distributions, not operating systems, and that (to quote RMS) the OS is GNU/Linux. Not RedHat. Not SuSE. Not Mandrake. Tell them you want 10000 desktops w. [insert your fav. distro here], and they'll work out a quote. It's just business. Not some stupid "holy distro war".
Large IT vendors will always follow the $$$, which is how they stay large. And when you're chasing sums of money that large, you have to follow the golden rule - "He who has the gold makes the rules". Hell, for enough money they'll support DOS, Cobol, Business Basic, Windows for Workgroups, OS2, etc..
He's talking about the position with major OEMs, and since he'd be a jerk to claim RedHat's #1 spot, he's decided to 'share the spotlight' here while showing his company in as strong a position as he can. That's his prerogative as CEO, and it's honestly true for the moment. Look at IBM. Look at Dell. Look at whatever Sun might be doing. Look at Oracle. Look at any other big-name x86 vendor, and see which distros they offer for preload. In terms of units sold *as Linux solutions from the get-go,* these two companies are the champions right now.
That out of the way, I think Debian will take the #3 spot when things settle (along the next five years). It's not perfect, but it's free, and the companies with any chance at all of becoming Tomorrow's Big Names are the ones bringing new (non-Intel, non-AMD) platforms to market. Debian has an obvious advantage here, because it doesn't *cost* those hardware companies anything beyond the porting effort they'd probably wind up sponsoring anyway, and as the user experience improves (and commercial UNIX, of the non-Linux sort, keeps proving itself Not Much Better), there's less reason for businesses to throw cash at what will wind up as basic 'word processor/spreadsheet/browser' workstations, departmental fileservers, or one of a thousand blades in a hosting farm.
That said, I'm not trying to disparage Mandrake or Gentoo's efforts - I'm a BSD user myself, and I think the BSDs collectively have/deserve as good a shot as Debian here. I just think those two distros, and a score of others, will continue to have their 'niches' - often as "after-the-fact" loads done by savvy admins for specific purpose (performance/personal preference in Gentoo's case, educational/small-business 'box recycling' for Mandrake)... at least until any other distro company gets organized enough to stage a Lindows-style assault on the 'consumer' desktop.
To say it again:
RHAT and SUSE = what you get when you buy a big-brand 'Linux server' today.
Debian = Up and coming in the preloaded space, because vendors of tomorrow's white-box PPC970s and Netwinder-equivalents can't afford much else. Look for FreeBSD 5.x to 'steal' a few installations on high-end x86/AMD64/IA64 machines, and Debian to 'take' more of the para-embedded/nifty-weird-hardware market NetBSD focuses on. (I see this as more of a 'shuffle' than a 'war,' and assume continued growth on both sides of the fence.)
Everyone else = Hopefully continuing to do well enough through contract for specific corporate solutions and shrink-wrap/downloadware sales.
A house divided cannot stand. Publicity like this is just the medication Microsoft needs to overcome the shit they have created with security lately. I hope that Linux distros can find a way to overcome this rediculous counter-productive in fighting that the media and SCO is trying to stir. I note that MSNBC/ TECH TV are trying their best to look unattached. Even though you can bet that Leo L will not be too silent on these issues. Bet he comes back with the usual "Linux is not quite ready for the desktop" garbage and tows the MS line! GNU and Linux has suffered from this rush to divide. Lets not help MS with this hatchet job by providing more fuel for the fire!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Please read it again, he is talking about corporate server environment, and the question was about servers also.
> CRN: Do you think a company like IBM needs to
/sbin? Ummm... Duh! Hopefully /etc.
> come out and indemnify users against possible
> legal action?
> Seibt: Why should they? I don't believe there
> is an issue. I don't think there's a need at
> this time to have this discussion of
> indemnification.
Hmm, a CEO of a OS company who thinks that his
*customers* should be liable for any legal
problems found in the OS. Ouch, that's scary.
And aren't these the same people who thought
it was a good idea to put the rc startup
framework into
they have managed to pull their head out and
put it where it belongs in
that with all this arrogance they are not the next company to go sco.
-><- no
I work for one of the Large publishers.
I try to not only support the "commercial" distributions, but maintain a list of known working versions of glibc, and the like. This is for a few reasons.
1) Just because RedHat AS 2.1 shipped with glibc version x and Kernel Revision y doesn't mean that those versions will be in place when our software is installed. To an extent, even "commercial distros" are no more useful a rule of thumb for compatibility than any other Linux distribution. Yes we Certify against release versions, but this is the real world. Security and bug fixes being what they are, a Real World BUSINESS installation is not terribly likely to be "as in the box" 3 months later. Every Unix/Linux platform I test is like that.
2) given a list of compatible package revisions, one can reasonably speculate whether it is worth testing/installing the product on something along the lines of Gentoo/Slack/Debian.
We don't necessarily certify those distributions, but you all know as well as I do that you can't tell a System Administrator "sorry, your OS isn't on the approved list" and expect to sell an expensive application. I'd rather our field guys say "it should work. Eval it, and if it does, we'll sell you licenses/whatever."
If they're big enough, I guarantee that they will get support no matter how home brew/non-Commercial their installations are.
3) If a particular package version (stable, mind you) breaks us, there might be a good reason why. At the very least, it should be noted in the bug database for investigation/tracking, supported or not.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
...All press about the management of Lindows, points towards them being interested in bettering linux. Mandrake caters to it's consumers and redhat is a company that gives back to it's community. Suse seems to be out only for their benefit and while they might make a good product, I don't want to support their business style....
Sorry to rain on your parade, but you're into serious bullshitting territory here.
SuSE (~300 employees) has a subtancial amount of fulltime developers programming OSS day-in and day-out. They pretty much did Alsa by themselves, they did something like 90% of United Linux and they are the ones in the market offering the biggest value for the least money. They've translated big parts of the linux documentation into german and offer a solid service that goes beyond just having a cardboard box. A box with the largest paperdocumentation on a linux distro, I might add. Shure SuSE wants to make a buck, but stating that they're only focusing on their benefit and not giving back anything of substance is just plain silly.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Sounds like a bad comedy routine, doesn't it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Listed RedHat in the 75% range. Then Caldera/SuSE/TurboLinux/FreeBSD were all about 25%.
I would not be surprised if there were more FreeBSD installs than SuSE.
Hmm... I've heard of Red Hat Linux, but what's SuSE again?
Maybe this guy should try installing Mandrake.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Whoever summarized the article really took offense to the "two distros" comment. That's a pity: SuSE is a good community citizen, and has gone a long way toward making Linux acceptable to the corporate and government crowd. They're also convinced Linux belongs on the desktop--as opposed to (for instance) Red Hat, which seems to have decided Linux desktops are for hobbyists.
He's right, by the way: the IT world is concentrating on SuSE and RH right now. That doesn't mean Gentoo/Debian/Mandrake/Slackware and the rest don't have a place, but none of these distros have done much to get themselves certified for government adoption. SuSE has. Power to 'em.
I like SuSE, and have put 8.2 Professional on five machines in the past few months. My friends love it. It's an easy install, and yast is a convenient manager. SuSE goes naturally with KDE.
The only computer in my life that isn't running SuSE is my iBook, which uses Yellow Dog 3.0. It's tough to beat Terrasoft's Mac hardware support.
I'm happy to buy from a company that's passionate about the platform and knows how to play hardball with Microsoft.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
...while Red Hat's dominance cannot be doubted, and Suse's extreme popularity is not in question either, it would be a mistake to ignore the "31 flavors" aspect of linux. For instance, I keep at least two Knoppix Live CD's on my person at all times, and I hand them out like candy. People are amazed that there are OS's that are stable, beautiful and not Microsoft/Apple.
Then there's Lindows, and FreeBSD (though less of a nix, more of a nux). At least 5% of Macs now run Yellow Dog Linux IIRC, and I know for a fact that some schools have revived their old PowerPC 61xx's using MKLinux.
Regardless, he is generally right, but the OS community needs to downplay these statements, or it *will* become just Suse and RedHat.
Here are the distros currently supported by Oracle.
;-)
Yes, it's mostly just RedHat and SuSE that are supported by Oracle. Actually, SuSE just falls under UnitedLinux alongside SCO and some others. Not just any SuSE, either. The personal edition of SuSE you can download for free is not supported. You need Advanced or Enterprise Server versions of RedHat, SuSE, and other distros in order to be actually "supported" by Oracle.
That said, I'm sucessfully running Oracle 8i on Slackware and Oracle 9i on free SuSE, but those are non-production servers for evaluation.
The production servers run PostgreSQL on Slackware, naturally!
What does distro's like Gentoo actually contribute to the Linux community?
Nothing much that I've seen. Most of the real grunt work in the Linux can be split up into five or so active players. Linus and his Group,Debian,Redhat,SuSE,Mandrake,GNU,XFree and BSD to an extent. What Distro's like Gentoo and the rest basically do is leech off the primary group and try to act superior to everyone else. An good qustion to ask is there anyone from these 2nd string distro's who contributes to Linux kernel devlopment for instance? Or do they basically stand around and bitch about how bad X is for PC Gamers and how it should be replaced.
Oh, I left SuSE after 8.0 when I found that Mandrake 8.2 was much better...
At this point it's the people who use linux at home are the ones who are going to step up and suggest which linux to use. And SuSE may well be right there is only two real choices here, but that's one more than just SuSE. With the arrogance SuSE has shown towards their favourite distrobution and the fact there really isn't that much difference between SuSE and RedHat, SuSE may well find themselves the first loser which really isn't that much different from not being one of the choosen two in the first place.
Redhat seems to understand this better than most commercial distros. They don't go out of their way to cut down other to make themselves look better. Sometimes the best course of action is to sit nod and let the other person do all the work for you.
BTW I don't use either. Debian all the way here.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
...but in the original German fable, the hedgehog (our turtle) kills the hare and steals his gold and schnapps.
The Grimm fairy tales are like the GTA of the 19th century.
Not to be pedantic (I know what the situation is), but since when is the state of Linux dependent on any companies, let alone 2 companies?
Would "enterprise scalability" have been harder without corporate support? Yes, no doubt. What about "secure networks" of all kinds? Yes, that would have been harder. What about good old academic rigor? Well, we needed that perhaps.
So, IMHO the corps are right and justified to be proud; they should advertise it on TV in fact. I personally have no prob with buying their products. But dammit, they shouldn't act like they're the only thing, because those who know this biz know better than that... and they write the salesman's check.
Yes, both Suse and RH have massive resources within the Linux community. Yes, SGI and IBM do too. In this game, minds and hearts count as much as dollars. But let's not be stupid here; it's just a fraction of a very fractured market, overall.
So would the biz types please lose the used-car salesman mentality for the sake of my patience?
C|N>K
I just took a long, hard look at this from every angle. Red Hat changed everything recently with their reorganization of their product line. The end result? You can have the "rolling beta" for free, or you can pony up hundreds of dollars per box for an updated, stable OS. SuSE's latest version is everything I've thought Red Hat was for the past 5 years, and it's still available for a boxed-set price. It's stable, and I haven't found any bugs in it, unlike Red Hat 9, where I personally logged a couple bugs, and got tired of waiting for someone to fix them. SuSE's distros are also free to keep updated, unlike Red Hat's, and the updates are available for two years, not just one. I'm doing this a big disservice by not going into all the gory deatils, but that's the short story. If you like Red Hat, then SuSE 8.2 is the "Red Hat" that 9 should have been. And, yeah, I think this sort of attitude crosses over into the SLES and RHES products. Red Hat wants to lock people into their Red Hat Network service, and you'll violate your contract for those updates if you install on more than one machine. SuSE is still open, albeit for the price of one boxed set. I'm sticking with SuSE until they pull a "Red Hat." After that, I guess there's Gentoo for the desktops and Debian for the servers...
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Just wait until I'm in charge. When you see the sort of stuff I'm gonna pull, it'll make Microsoft seem like a benevolent-software-monopoly-dictatorship.
Get back in your hole Daryl McBitch, you only think you can screw everyone. -SMACK- -SMACK- You are going to jail.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...make a mod for RTCW that lets you play as Red Hat staff (Allies) or as SuSE staff (Axis).
Guys, come on. Actually I think Novell and Linux are almost synonomous--at least in my circle. I help administer a mixed Novell/Linux enviroment and almost every Novell customer I know is doing the same. Novell has been embracing the Open Source community for years and has actually been making money on products built *FOR* Linux--you don't see many other organizations that are able to do this yet. Now with the Ximian aquisition we will see Novell products [officially] on the Linux desktop, and I for one cannot wait. Just think of how nice it will be to snatch Windows out from under a clerical pleb without them even really noticing..? Even nicer, imagine doing so with Zenworks.. Mmm..
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Novell needs a new loading OS kernel to build Netware on. DOS certainly has reached it limitations with scalability and security so linux is an obvious solution.
What difference does it make what OS the loader runs under? Linux can be booted from MS-DOS, it's called loadlin.
Yep, thats it. My attempts at the spelling weren't even close.
Read, L
I was under the impression that when QA is the name of the day that this is pratically calling out for *BSD.
....Basically, if it has to be up, so far I haven't found a better OS than *BSD.
No offense to the linux dudes, FBSD boxes aren't a quarter as edgy or insecure as linux, (Yes, I know linux bugs are rapidly patched unlike a certain other software company, but really, look how many security holes Free or, even better, Open BSD has had in the last 5 years compared to linux vulnerabilities) though I admit the BSD family lags behind in some cutting edge features.
I have never used Red Hat except as a coaster. I got a copy of like 6.X someting SuSE retail.. I wasn't impressed. I am still using Mandrake and I plan on staying with it.
SuSE is sleeping with the enemy (SCO) Therefore it can bite me.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
I have used Linux since slackware 3.6a. I have tried slackware upto 7.0 then to redhat 5.2 at some point, then suse 7.0 and 8.1 and one of the more recent debian builds in between the suse versions.
...everything is right there for you. .rpm's with more ese then my redhat 5.2 could
Why SuSE? A few reasons:
1. it works out of the box on every box from my an old p75 to my newest 2.4GHz with and without scsi, and raid.
2. it has the shortest install time, esp. since everything is now on one DVD or 7 CD's
3. yast2. the way suse can handle both tarballs and
4 it has a killer firewall script that is just extremely fast to edit, so i don't ahve to waste hours rewritng my firewall whenever i move a box from its role to a new one, or 10-15 minutes just to play a new online game or something.
Slackware is and was great, but i got tired of wasting all the time building from tarballs.
Redhat was just riddled with bugs and problems, even installing its own rpm's
However, I think SuSE has seen its day, too. They have gone too proprietary, and non-standard compliant, making it a pain in the rear to update these days. Needless to say 3 years of SuSE is now soon to be over on my boxes...back to slackware or maybe something new, for I shall not use RedHat due to past experience, and I will not use it simply because "its what everyone else uses"...which is why most people in the US use it, I think. Because I never found it that impressive compared to other distros.
oh, and i live in the US, also.
I've played around with a most of the big linux distros, and nothing compares with the ease of KNOPPIX for getting a great system loaded and running. All the benefits of the Debian distro without the headaches. At Distrowatch, it's currently generating more interest than Suse. The live CD format, easy HD installation, and excellent hardware detection allows easy access to apt-get. That could be the ticket to increasing the linux share on the desktop. http://www.knoppix.com/
I use Debian. I like Debian because I don't have money, and I find the mailing list support good and useful.
That said, all the time people ask questions from a RH point of view, or mention "well, I also have SUSE". Nobody gets in a dither--at least, not any more than usual (the Debian mailing lists are not "professional" by a long shot, and the burners are kept on with a constant low-level flame.)
But to be honest, I've seen, indeed installed SUSE before, and SUSE's YAST is every bit as good as Debian's installer. For newbies, it's probably better. Indeed, their partitioning program is better as well, in my opinion.
And when I installed it, it was a sample install, but I got everything. After that, I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to install any source code I needed.
My point is that if a company was interested in installing Linux, or if a person who had the $80, and understood German better than English wanted it, I would not hesitate to recommend SUSE.
I really don't see any vs.
That said, the Debian distribution is every bit as valuable as the SUSE distribution. As I mentioned above, I use Debian. I really do hope that the CEO was saying essentially "if you want to go with a Linux company, that means us or RH", and not turning SCOish (starting to think with an "us vs. free as in beer" mentality).
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
To be arrogant you have to be in a dominant position in the first place.
Suse is at present wanabe big player, not a big player in the linux world
Despite the abscence of funding, Debian is the second most popular Linux distribution we find on internet web sites, surpassed only by Red Hat, and leaving the likes of SuSE and Mandrake in its wake.
So if Netcraft are to be believed, Richard Seibt seems to be right in that it is a two distro world; its just that SuSE isn't one of them.
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
Come on, guys! He's talking about the corporate world!
I know there have been like 200 comments stating the exact same thing, but they have all been modded +5 Insightful. I just love those points...
When a friend of mine who's been buying SuSE since v6.3 put SuSE8.2 update on his laptop whick killed it.
He contacted SuSE support who told him RTFM. Trouble his that the update version of SuSE has nothing in the manual that covers the problem he had and he had stated it was the updtae version so presumably they hadn't bothered checking. On every other problem he's mailed their support on the service he's received has been equally unhelpful and now he's just stopped bothering to contact them.
So I'd guess that the piss poor support that he, as an individual, has received shows where all SuSE's efforts are going and people who at get crap support as a home user aren't going to be wildly excited about having it in their office.
Personally, I have no qualms about Mandrake and run it, server and desktop, in several offices with no probs. Paid for support is low cost, fast and generally friendly and the community gets you out of a sticky position within 24 hours 5/10 times for free
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Well, up til recently, a SPARC distribution. Redhat stopped letting people download their sparc distro back around version 6, SuSE kept theirs around much longer
rms said, "Well, God told me that GNU/Linux was the One True Linux. Nobody else."
Seibt said, "Well, God told me that Redhat and SuSE were the One True Distros. Nobody else."
Linus said, "Wait, wait -- I never said that."
philcrissman.com.
linux == slackware
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
Speaking of flat wrong...
Ummm, are you forgetting about the fact that SuSE and IBM signed the Munich deal? I doubt that SuSE is unaware of IBM. But IBM doesn't have a Linux distro, which is why they teamed up with SuSE.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This is an old article - about 4 days old. I should know, that was when I submitted the story.
On 2003-08-18 14:52:23 to be precise.
But my submission has neither been rejected or accepted.
Throw another karma log on the fire.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Remember that really where SuSE is coming from is in the business space. And from our experience, in that area, he's right. We rarely run into business servers running anything other than Red Hat or SuSE, or maybe Turbo.
On the personal, home user side the installs are far more varied.
K.
Has anyone noticed how as RedHat and SuSE get bigger, their distros get weaker?
I have never regretted my speech,
but I have frequently regretted my failure to speak.
wait your turn for mod points, you loud mouthed bastard
Gentoo
L indows
Libranet
Xandros
YellowDog
Conectiva
TurboLinux
are all companies!! just to name a few
quote:
Or this:
Another quote:
So together with all the other distro's mentioned I think SuSe is just dreaming about their being only two distro's. Perhaps they want to be the european Microsoft?
I am one of the few linux users who is not looking forward to mainstream adoptation of linux. Sure call me elitist but I don't need my favorite OS polluted by WinModem drivers, binary only drivers and grahical boot screens.
The reason I have stopped using first redhat, mandrake and Suse is that they all seem to insist on going the MS way installing web based configuration tools for apps I can control infinitly better from a config file.
Sorry, I started ranting. Never mind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah Suse and RedHat are COE and CCC. CCC is required for DoE servers that touch anything secure or nuclear.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
[..]Debian was developed specifically to counter "Linux Companies"[..] That, my dear Twitter, is complete nonsence. Please read the retrospective by the founder of Debian himself. When the Debian project was started, there were no other distro types!
I fear that a subtle point was missed in your missive.
;->
Seibt, when stating there was desire by vendors for two Linux distros, he was saying that competition is essential. If business-grade Linux was restricted to either Red Hat or SuSE, then vendors would find themselves in the same trap they suffer under Microsoft. Seibt was merely stating the obvious -as vendors commit to Linux (based on the demands of their customers), vendors want choice between equals.
Seibt's statement about it being SuSE, Red Hat and nobody else is merely a statement of fact. As good as other distributions are, the only ones actively considered by businesses are SuSE and Red Hat. Anyone arguing otherwise has not been paying attention to commercial buying trends.
As for polls on websites . . . so many problems here. First, be aware that these polls are most commonly answered by members of the community and assorted hobbyists. This group is as far, far cry from the business buyers to which Seibt was referring. Second (and this comes from professional experience in survey design and research, especially online), these polls are meaningless. They are unscientific and merely popularity polls for an unfocussed group. So ignore them, especially when discussing business Linux.
As for SuSE not submitting commercial distributions for general public beta . . . I cannot fathom why this would be a problem. I've managed software production for commercial vendors, and the madness of a public beta would do little for a company like SuSE who's main focus are enterprise buyers. Indeed, I applaud them for looking out for their customers and business interest by having focused, regulated beta cycles. Besides, how many people in the community have a z900 in their den ready for beta testing the latest mainframe SuSE distro
So, lighten-up dude. I think you misinterpreted Seibt's statements. SuSE is a friend of business Linux buyers and the community. Thanks to them there are Opteron and Athelon64 distros, and other goodies for use to enjoy.
The quotes you provide are all in response to different questions. They are out of context of the relevant question. The relevant question and answer interchange only touched upon server OSes in corporate environments.
In fact, and again, the OSes and related companies that Seibt mentioned when beginning that specific answer were Unix vendors HP, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, SCO, who face competition from MS Windows. OK, So far he's talking about servers.
From that point, he goes to say that - the above companies, facing competition from MS, have to think about their strategies for the future because, in his view, industry has already decided that the only competitor to MS is Linux. OK, he's still talking about Unix vendors competing with MS in the server market and their strategy as far as Linux.
Now, when it comes to main competition against MS in this arena, there are only 2 companies/distros that are supported by large IT vendors [for the server market], and those are RedHat and SuSE. And, from that perspective, even Novell decided to bail out of OS competition. OK, he's still talking about servers.
Don't you see? He is discussing corporate server market, not desktop, not average Joe. This does not mean that the whole interview was about servers, but that the specific answer, and the quote that was taken our of context, definitely was.
Here's a quote from Oracle's site source here:
And in an article on clustering here they again take an OS-agnositic viewpoint. Or is Oracle not big enough? Their ads don't say "Red Hat Linux". They say "Linux".Or take cpu mnufacturers. They offer cpus specifically targeted to the server market, and they don't care which distro you run. They support them all. Or do we now not count cpu manufacturers as part of the IT industry?
Different versions of GNU/Linux are pretty much interchangeable, and most people understand that. Seibt doesn't, or he's trying to pull a SCO.
The actual facts say that SuSE is bullshitting when they claim to be "up there" in terms of numbers, as was pointed out by distroWatch, both in an earlier link, and here, where interest in SuSE lags below Mandrake, Red Hat, Gentoo, Yoper, Debian, and Knoppix, and especially here, where they point out that SuSE is talking out of their ass, in specific reference to Seibt's comments.
Or you might want to look at this slashdot poll, where even insensitive clod distros outpolled SuSE.
SuSE seems to think that its' all about the install. I think they've come down with a YaST infection.
I don't disagree with most of what you say there.
/. story submission. And then they go bragging about Mandrake, Gentoo, and other distributions including desktop installations, and browser statistics, supported by "no reliable" polls by their own admission. In fact the quote from the other ZDNet article that distrowatch references is as follows:
/. or any other polls to prove such a point is... well... I don't have a comment on that one.
My point was that Seibt was talking about large IT vendors supporting server OS in the arena of OS competition in the corporate server market... and the quote taken out of context from that interview. It seems we now both agree to this.
Now, I don't agree completely with Seibt's opinion, and, it's clear, neither do you. I believe other GNU/Linux distributions have a fair chance of grabbing a share of corporate server market, and getting reasonable support from large IT vendors. You bring a good example of Oracle. In the beginning Oracle only "supported" their software on SuSE, then RedHat (if I am not mistaken). But now, they are more distro-agnostic, and rightly so. If Yahoo can use FreeBSD, then it's only reasonable to think that some large corporation may predominantly use Debian on their servers, for example. Obviously, Seibt thinks otherwise (what does "pull a SCO" have to do with this, anyway?).
As far as distrowatch links, they seem to take the quote out of the context as well, just like the
Q: But if they're getting rid of Unix, that would suggest there's room for more Linux distributions. It's all open source. It's all transparent.
A: If you ask them, they will tell you they want to support two distributions.
The question, again, is about replacing Unix in corporate environment, not a Pentium II box in someone's parents' basement. In that sense, and in many others, none of these polls are accurate, make sense, or even relevant to Seibt's specific answer, and taking
Thanks for the bit of history, I was able to find some references to SLS and a download of the MCC interim release.
I hadn't heard of either of them before your post, although I would have known about SLS if I had been reading the manifesto more carefully.
Read, L
I don't about you, but I'm sitting here typing this message on my machine which is running slackware 9 and is as solid as a rock. I don't think slackware is getting the respect is deserves. I run Oracle 9iAS on top of it and it never falters.
Dave Hill, Pimp
hi i'm totally new to linux scene, i was wodnering if anyone could point me in the right direction for getting started, i'm hoping to set up a small ftp server using linux, but have no clue where to start or what distro to use, any help would be appreciated, thanks
You missed that part where I conceded that SuSE is known in Deutschland (which, incidentally, is where Munich is located).
Bottom line is, who is responsible for getting linux on corporate servers? The answer is a big I-B-M. SuSE can puff up all they want, but IBM could go with any linux distro, practically. They could roll their own, if they wanted or needed to. Ask any CEO who makes linux and they'll say IBM. As such, I maintain that what the SuSE suit was saying was a tad deceptive, or at least way overly self-important.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Definition: "pull a SCO" == "give the impression that you're vastly more important/relevant (especially in the IT industry) than you are".
Update of an old saying about statistics: "There's lies, damn lies, statistics, and Bible quotes" :-)
So, how was your weekend?
This is true, but obvious and irrelevant. Simply being a company who makes linux does not get it on desktops or servers. Regarding his quote where he suggested that half of corporate linux is because of SuSE...that's laughable. It's because of IBM.
If you ask people who makes "Linux", you'll get various answers - and I'll bet none of them are IBM.
How much money, and do I get to pick the people? If you mean slashdot users, you're right. If you're talking corporate America, people outside the IT department never heard of SuSE, and probably not Redhat either. They've heard of IBM. So when the IT guy goes to the CEO and says "We want to go with linux instead of Microsoft," the CEO says "What the hell is linux?" At this point, the IT guy has two options. He can say, "An OS made by this obscure company in Germany," or he can say "A great OS made by IBM." Guess one gets linux on machines at that company.
Until IBM rolls their own distro, they aren't a big name in Linux.
Absolute horseshit. IBM is directly responsible for most of the linux installs running in the corporate world. Period. That may not make them a big name in the slashdot crowd, but around normal humans, and in business, it does.
. But SuSE is one of the largest distros, and even IBM recognizes that - otherwise they wouldn't have chosen to partner with them.
True, but their impact is still miniscule. Let's look at it this way - I bet SuSE puts linux on more machines in the US *with* IBM than *without.* You want the counter position?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
That doesn't make IBM a Linux company. IBM is a solution company. Just because the corporate world is very familiar with IBM doesn't make them a Linux company. It doesn't make the original statemet about SuSE and RedHat being the big two providers of Linux less true. The perception of the business world doesn't change the fact.
Absolute horseshit. IBM is directly responsible for most of the linux installs running in the corporate world. Period. That may not make them a big name in the slashdot crowd, but around normal humans, and in business, it does.
Of course IBM is huge in the business world. Them being responsible for getting Linux installed in businesses doesn't make them responsible for Linux itself. It is a small distinction, and probably not worth arguing about.
Let's look at it this way - I bet SuSE puts linux on more machines in the US *with* IBM than *without.* You want the counter position?
Sure, I'll take the counter position - without a Linux distribution such as RedHat or SuSE, IBM puts Linux on zero machines in the US.
The original point was that SuSE and RedHat were said to be the two biggest names in Linux, and someone argued that they forgot about IBM. It doesn't matter what people in the business world think, IBM is not a big player in the Linux world. They are huge in the IT and business world, nobody doubts that. They are smart because they know better than to reinvent the wheel, so they partner with companies who are the big players in whatever part of IT they need to use. That is SuSE and RedHat.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You can play semantics all you want, perception (right or wrong) is what matters.
Them being responsible for getting Linux installed in businesses doesn't make them responsible for Linux itself. It is a small distinction, and probably not worth arguing about.
I never claimed they were responsible for linux itself, it's indeed irrelevant, and if you aren't arguing it no one is.
Sure, I'll take the counter position - without a Linux distribution such as RedHat or SuSE, IBM puts Linux on zero machines in the US.
Again, you think they couldn't? It's cheaper to do it that way. Look at it this way. SuSE existed, in a near vacuum, before IBM. Only with IBM is linux on computers. No, IBM didn't make linux. They got it on machines. And, I might add, an OS *not* on machines is prettty pointless.
The original point was that SuSE and RedHat were said to be the two biggest names in Linux, and someone argued that they forgot about IBM.
Yeah, me.
It doesn't matter what people in the business world think,
Tell that to whoever's paying your salary, assuming you're employed and out of college.
IBM is not a big player in the Linux world.
Perhaps Stallman's linux world, if only because they haven't renamed the company GNU/IBM. They're damned big when it comes to translating linux into cash, which, I might add, none of the "big players" you're fond of have been able to do.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
They could have, but they didn't. Why? Because SuSE had already done all the work of putting together a good distro. Obviously, IBM considers SuSE one of the big players in the Linux distro game. They are the distro provider, IBM is the "enabler" if you will. Linux distros have existed up to this point on their own merits, and by your account being on next-to-zero computers. SuSE may need IBM to further their business, but their business existed on its own before they partnered with IBM. Neither is essential to the others survival, but I think they can work very well together.
Perhaps Stallman's linux world, if only because they haven't renamed the company GNU/IBM. They're damned big when it comes to translating linux into cash, which, I might add, none of the "big players" you're fond of have been able to do.
Exactly. IBM knows IT business. SuSE knows Linux. IBM knows that they aren't a Linux company, SuSE et al know that they don't have huge hooks into IT business. That is why they are working together. They do different things, and each does their own very well.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.