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Gateway Forges Partnership With SuSE

Posted by simoniker on from the everyone's-hooking-up-this-morning dept.

Zardus writes "According to Forbes, Gateway has named SuSE a "strategic partner" and will be offering SuSE Linux on all of their servers. I always thought SuSE would be a nice name for a cow, but I guess I'll have to settle with it being the OS of a spotted server." The article notes: "SuSE has long sought a greater presence in the United States, where rival Red Hat has taken the lead in selling Linux server software to businesses."

2 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Finally another Linux partner by Krondor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I for one have been waiting quite awhie to see a major vendor endorse another distro besides RedHat. Variety helps everyone, as does competition, and I don't see how a choice between linux distros hurts Linux or the vendor.

    Good Show

    1. Re:Finally another Linux partner by Krondor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      .. I'd prefer they use Debian or Slackware or Gentoo or Mandrake or some other fully free Linux.

      Of course! Who wouldn't prefer that? However, you have to look at it from the Vendor support level. RedHat was always first on the support level because they did extensive testing and certified hardware as being functional in Linux. This takes a huge load off of vendors, such as Gateway, because they can check off their hardware against the list then guarantee their customers when they sell them a Linux box it will be compatible with Linux.

      The problem right now is that a lot of Vendors (excluding IBM) don't generally make their components. They buy a motherboard from MSI, a sound card from Creative, etc.. How are they to know if it is Linux compatible (and what degree of compatibility as some people's definitions seem different), without extensive product testing?

      Vendors such as SuSe, RedHat, and Debian (to an extent) do heavy testing and certification of Hardware. Face it SuSe and RedHat are "Enterprise Grade" in their testing processes. Gentoo will likely never be supported as it is constantly evolving to bleeding edge updates maintained by tons of packagers who generally aren't directly employeed by Gentoo.

      Debian is different in the size of its userbase, but Debian also does not have the resources for the kind of testing corportate Linux entities can muster. It will likely never have these facilities due to the community nature of the project, but instead relies on user testimony. Ex. "I use this it works". A vendor is going to need something a little more solid then testimony.

      Mandrake might have a shot if they could ever become profitable enough to put out some rigourous testing, though you could probably use RedHat's results fairly confidently with Mandrake (or any other Linux distro).

      Perhaps what is needed is a Hardware compatibility group that can test and verify hardware compatibility with various Linux distros, Kernel versions, etc..

      So to close, I still do not see how being able to choose between RedHat or Suse hurts Linux more then just being stuck with RedHat or nothing. You could argue that Vendors should just carry different Linux distros and not certify that they work, but I'm sure Gateway's legal team would feel queasy at that notion. Keep in mind companies are paranoid of brand association (Gateway sold this so they obviously endorse it).