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IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the big-deals dept.

dave writes "Novell announced that it has finalized a $50 million investment from IBM, and that IBM can now begin shipping SUSE Linux on all IBM server platforms. Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."

9 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Redhat may count the cost... by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... of catering only to the pay-for market. If IBM can bundle a no-cost distribution, why should they pay even token fees to Redhat to bundle their version of Linux as the IBM-blessed version? It's not as though IBM can't support any linux they care to. Hell, they're just about the only company that could support them *all* [grin]

    Or, perhaps it's payback time. Novell were very supportive of IBM in the SCO debacle. Perhaps this is IBM saying thankyou. Wouldn't it be ironic if SCO's actions were what caused Linux to become an even stronger corporate presence :-)

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:Redhat may count the cost... by EvilAlien · · Score: 4, Insightful
      This shouldn't surprise anyone.

      The writing has been on the wall for sometime. Even though local IBM reps have been non-committal about which Linux distribution they would recommend for hardware compatibility, support, etc, it has been pretty clear that a switch to SuSE was coming and that the Novell/IBM alliance would be strengthened. Now it has happened, and the businesses who use Linux and IBM gear have a better idea of how to plan their Linux deployments.

      Red Hat shot their own foot off with the shift in business model. Its not the fees associated with the RH Enterprise stuff as much as it is the brick wall put up in April. Red Hat 9 -> Fedora is not a feasiable option for mission critical business applications, and if a box has to be rebuilt anyways (to use RH Enterprise or something else) then full consideration to that "something else" ought to be made.

      I, for one, welcome the coming of our new green chameleon overlords.

      --
      perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
  2. Re:question? by budhaboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not in IT either, but aren't they at the forefront of that whole 'don't buy the hardware, buy the service' movement that has been taking off in recent years?

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. IBM has always been tight with Suse by puppetluva · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This post is misleading. IBM has always been close to Suse (probably closer than with Redhat):
    • IBM was one of the main investors in Suse from the beginning.
    • They shipped Suse for their Zseries (mainframe) boxes as the only option.
    • Many of the suse executives were ex-IBMers
    • I think that Suse was the distro they pitched in Munich (although I'm not as sure about this one)

    So. . . this should surprise no-one. IBM is omnipresent in Linux these days, but they have traditionally been the biggest force behind Suse (and now they are backing Novell).

    My Guess As to Why? There are things that IBM can do hiding behind the names "Suse" and "Novell" that they cannot do as "IBM".
  5. IBM is a company by 222 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IBM is a company, and a company sells what its customers want. If 6% of IBM's customer base wanted to use dr-dos, im sure IBM would find a means to deliver it. Thats all, theres nothing more to see here.
    Suse, for those that havent used it, is a fantastic distro btw... it was the first one to convince me to buy a boxed copy ;). Both home and personal versions on 8.2 and 9.

    Also, suse sells 3 foot inflatible penguins on their website, i paid 25 bucks for mine, and TRUST ME... it impresses the ladies.

  6. Version Creep, Platforms and Support by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The biggest problem I've had over the past few months with Redhat is this:

    Heaps of apps targeted and marketed towards the Redhat "platform".

    Redhat has dropped support for old products... this means no security updates, which upsets corporate IT departments and PHBs. They all say "thou shall upgrade to a supported version"

    However, the RH 8 platform is only two years old and unsupported.

    Now if your apps are "supported only under Redhat 8", but your servers "must upgrade to a supported version", short of tedious technical assessments, Redhat has effectively killed the products you're using.

    PHB's say "I knew we shouldn't have trusted this Linux crap! Now our apps are unsupported!"

    Now... does the application developer target RH AS? Which has already crept to 2.1, or do they consider SuSE, Debian, or ditch Linux altogether?

    I'm certain IBM has encountered this problem. There are apps on the IBM website which used to show Linux support for Redhat 8 and under, but now that RH8 is unsupported, the apps show no support for Linux at all.

    IBM, a company which still provides support for OS/2, and will probably service your ball typewriter if you paid them enough, has to tell its customers "our supplier has dropped support."

    Will IBM stick with Redhat?

    Something is going to blow very, very soon. Redhat would be wise to offer support for prior versions... and NOW, and drop the BS version creep.

    Their stellar stock performance over the past few months has come at the price of customer loyalty.

  7. I have to just scratch my head by bogie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've always hated the fickle part of the Linux community. The kind that always rooted for Red Hat to Fall even though they've given away the code to everything they've ever produced. Even back in the mid 90's you had these jackass's calling Red Hat the "Microsoft" of Linux soley because they were the most popular.

    Now along comes Novell/Suse. Suse of course has specialized in proprietary restrictive distros. Only just recently has Yast been gpl'd. Novell of course has specialized in proprietary software for like 20 years. These are the company's that you want to lead Linux and OSS for the next 10 years? Let me tell you. Novell may finally allow ISO's of some low end form of Suse to be released but their main goal is combining their proprietary technologies with Suse. So now you'll see a Suse with a GPL Yast but proprietary NDS,Groupwise, Zenworks, Ximian connector etc. Novell btw also doesn't have the best track record for acquisitions and business management for the last 10 years. In fact they have a downright shitty track record. This is the mega-company that you want to "lead" linux for the next 10 years?

    Good luck. Oh and Redhate sucks.

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  8. The Big Slashdot Fallacy by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Slashdotters need to start understanding that "It works for me," is not an argument. The typical Slashdotter has a level of hacking skill that is neither available nor desired by the world at large.

    It gets old. You talk about email clients, and someone will insist that you can get by with a plain text mailer -- MIME attachments are passing fad. You talk about off-the-shelf routers, and somebody will wonder why you don't just use an old laptop running BSD. You discuss the problems of providing reliable downloads, and someone will insist that BitTorrent, a tool you need to be a total hacker to use, is a universal solution.

    And of course there's the dude who asks, "I have no trouble working with Fedora, why is it a problem for IBM?" Of course it doesn't even occur to him that Red Hat gets the same amount of revenue for Fedora as they get for SuSE. Which is to say, none.

    Repeat after me: "OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS FROM ME."