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Novell's Linux Business Takes a Seat At the Grown-Up Table
CNet is reporting that while Novell still has a long way to go before they start making Red Hat nervous, they have at least gotten a seat at the grown-up table. Reporting 31% year-over-year growth in their Linux business, Novell attributes very little of this success to their Microsoft partnership, looking to their Redmond connection mainly for interoperability work. "Novell's core Linux business is growing. By 'core,' I mean that our non-Microsoft- related Linux business is growing. These are Suse Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions sold directly by the Novell sales force or by our channel partners, without any Microsoft certificates or Microsoft salespeople involved. However, the important thing is that our total revenue picture for Suse Linux Enterprise is growing, as our customers increasingly don't distinguish. As we've said before, Microsoft offers an alternate avenue for purchasing subscriptions but we are focused on growth of the whole category."
We are late arrivals in linux land. However we are deploying a new suse server a week to replace NT servers. We have gone from zero to 35% in little over 3 months. It really is linux for the enterprise made easy. And whats even better, the toolsets are free, opensuse is free, and no shitty activation codes. It's all gravy, to use a bad term ;)
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
While the parent's tone is strong, there are other factors besides the trojan horse microsoft has delivered to consider. The company is not financially healthy in any way, shape, or form. Management performance is still dismal. SuSe is not a silver bullet, or at least hasn't appeared to save the company.
Argue for a minute that SuSe saves their bacon, there's no proof Novell can out-manage RedHat. Let's say BOTH companies are viable growth assets, then I think Microsoft will open the trojan horse they sent to Novell at bare minimum.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Speaking of security, I kinda like 2 things about Apparmor vs SELinux (which oddly, Canonical chose for Ubuntu, over SELinux). One, the control follows the relative path to the file as opposed to the inode. Now, some may like it the other way around, but if you update the executable, as long as the path stays the same, no changes have to be made. This increases the chance of an administrator NOT forgetting to update the settings for the restrictions during an update or for a patch where they have not gotten all the details. The other reason...It is not written by the NSA. Call me nutty, but I don't exactly like the involvement of government in my software.
Ok, I use Linux and have since Slackware 1.1. I promote Linux as a more than viable alternative to the Redmond 'Lock in System'.
But, I see SUSE as the following.
A Linux system that you can buy (note not OpenSUSE) without the fear of being sued by Microsoft for the duration of the licensing agreement between the two companies.
For that reason, I would not recommend SUSE to any business at all. I might be legally wrong but that is how the tie up between Novell & MS seem to me a non Lawyer.
I do appreciate the stuff that Novell has contributed but personally, I won't touch anything that uses MONO with a 100m Barge Pole. Yes, I know it is apparently free of any potential patent liabilities but I see it as a trojan horse much like Moonlight.
IMHO, Microsoft wished that Novell, RedHat & Canonical would just disappear. They are not so I wish that for once they (MS that is) would say 'Ok guys, we will work properly with you for the pure benefit of our customers'. That is as likely (IMHO) as Concorde ever flying again.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Do you remember the days when any company that stroke a deal with Microsoft, died a horrible and agonizing death? Well, look at this deal with Novell: it seems this is the first time a company pulled a fast one - on Microsoft! Novell saw a small opportunity to make a bit of money and offered to Microsoft something Novell must have known is worthless and impossible: the proprietarization of Linux. Microsoft was desperate enough that it wanted to believe this baloney and Novell was more than happy to oblige and feed them the BS, making a few bucks in the process, and attracting (extremely few) additional customers. Not too much profit, but every little helps, and you won't spit on it, especially if you give NOTHING in return, like Novell did to Microsoft.
Microsoft is getting sloppy and silly. These are indeed new times.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I like Apparmor because it is much much easier to configure and use than SELinux. It also creates less of a performance drain.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton