Novell To Open Source SUSE

jambarama writes "Newsforge reports Novell will be open sourcing SUSE professional under the name OpenSUSE. Is Novell following in the footsteps of Red Hat Inc., with its Fedora Core Linux distribution, or continuing its own open source policy as it has in the past as with YAST?" Note that it looks like the opensuse.org site is not yet up.

Comments

The real question: binary compatibility

[TripMaster Monkey]

Is Novell following in the footsteps of Red Hat Inc., with its Fedora Core Linux distribution, or continuing its own open source policy as it has in the past as with YAST?

While I'd much prefer the latter, I'm betting that the former possibility is much more probable. However, either option would be just fine, provided that the new OpenSuSE is binary-compatible with SuSE Professional.

From TFA:

Lowry did not confirm it, but sources say that Novell will also make the multi-platform software build system freely available to the community, so developers can build versions of packages for any hardware they support. Novell will still sell boxed versions of SUSE with tech support, but everyone will have access to updates and developmental code.

From this excerpt, it seems that Novell doesn't intend to make the two binary-incompatible, as Red Hat did with Fedora and RHEL. I certainly hope they don't change their minds on this.

Re:The real question: binary compatibility

[CdBee]

IMO it is near-unacceptable that any two distributions of Linux on the same processor-platform should be binary-incompatible.

Dependencies can be a problem, but that's what the LSB is for, surely - just supply the damn' libs, you don't have to use them in your default config !

The level of binary compatibility between any 2 same-platform linux distros should be at the very least equal to the level of compatibility between Win 2000 and Win XP.

Re:The real question: binary compatibility

[CdBee]

Technical binary compatibility is an irrelevance if Mr.Average User can't get his application to install. Maybe it is possible to convert an RPM to a DEB and install it with Apt-get or one of its front-ends but again that's further than most users want to go just to get a pre-compiled app running.

A feasible business model

[guaigean]

This is probably one of the best moves Novell can make for both themselves and the OSS community. As Linux gains popularity, corporations are wanting to move to open source apps, but want corporate backing and support. This gives Novell the flexibility of both tracks, and offers another stable solution for enterprise level business.

Huh...

[__aaclcg7560]

Open sourcing a linux distro that contains Open Source Software (OSS). What an interesting concept. Did Novell take a patent on this? Will Microsoft be the doing the same thing? What about SCO?

now make it use apt.

[cies]

Now finally the community might have a chance to make and totally apt based SuSE.

Currently it is possible http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ to have apt run on top of an existing SuSE but not as the default installation medium. I feel that apt is the one thing that stand in between of SuSE and perfection.

The current (YaST/RPM) based solution is not too bad, but it is just too slow. Seaches in the package database take ages. And, iirc, it cannot do multiple downloads at the same time.

Right now im installing SuSE 9.3 from the default http site. I thought it was released to the public more than a weak ago, but it still is not on the mirrors. It right now is about to take 6 hours to download 1.3 gig of packages. amazing.

but afterall i still feel suse is the best (most polished) desktop distro arround.

im looking forward to what this move will bring us.

cies breijs.