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SuSE larger than RedHat
Suse: We are the largest.
As a reaction to the IPO of RedHat, which requires the company to disclose its earnings, german Linux distributor Suse has disclosed their own numbers. While RedHat reported a turnover of $11M between March 1998 and February 1999, Suse reported a turnover of almost $15M (Deutschmark 26.6 M) between 01-Apr-1998 and 31-Mar-1999. Like RedHat, most of this is due to their distribution sales (Deutschmark 17.4M). Unlike RedHat, who lost $130.000 during this time, Suse was able to report earnings of an undisclosed amount during this time.
Both companies employ approx. 130 people each at the time and are growing rapidly: In 1Q1999 Suse reported a turnover of Deutschmark 9.5M, an increase of 230% compared to the year before. Since the funding of SUSE Inc. in the USA, german Distributor Suse is focusing more and more on the international market. CEO Roland Dyroff reported a larger than proportional growth of the US daugther. He did not want to answer direct questions about an IPO, though. "
The version of SuSE you buy in USA defaults
to English.
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
My reading of the YAST license is that sharing is okay, selling is not. I.e., you cannot create "Sassy Linux" based on SuSE Linux and make money selling it. But you can install one copy on every workstation in your office if you want.
Still, the YAST license is the main reason why I am still running Red Hat on my machines. There are other reasons (Red Hat is more enterprise-friendly in the way they lay out their filesystem, for example), but the YAST license is the key.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
:) I wish I had a spare machine to install on.
I depend on my system for school related stuff and I can't afford any problems (working on too many long term projects).
This sig is false.
Of course it would not kill them to GPL the installer, but the founders of SuSE do not want competitors based upon their product. Remember, SuSE Linux exists because they took Slackware and translated it to German. They don't want anybody doing to SuSE what they did to Slackware.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
that's nuthin! I swing from vine to vine from my house to my isp, toggling switches manually at either end for eatch bit ... through low crawling through the forty yards of mud and barbed wire in front of my house is startin to slow me down!
support gun control: take guns from cops
We monitor the Linux distributions used by the people who register the MpegTV Player ( mtv).
Currently we observe 20% to 30% more SuSE 6.1 users than RedHat 6.0 users. The observation is meaningful because the shareware version of mtv is bundled with those two Linux distributions.
By the way, RedHat now asks all ISV (Independent Software Vendors) to pay $2,495 if they want their products (commercial or shareware) bundled with RedHat's next release!
Needless to say, we will not pay RedHat this kind of money, when many other Linux distributors (like SuSE) will bundle our shareware without charging us a dime.
I'm even studlier. I just make obscene
gestures at the neighbors undulate and that
little birdie whistles the proper codes
into the phone. What, animal abuse? Oops.
For receiving I don't use anything, I just
mathematically deduce the probability of
different comment topics, now my abacus
told me the current topic is suse vs. redhat.
Then again, it's pretty common to have
any flamewar.
template
slashdot::comment(V, U)
{
if (robPostsAnything())
badmouth(IAmFor(V) ? U : V);
else
badmouth(this);
}
It sure is It has 5 cd's! Switch to FreeBSD and spear that Penquin in the a**.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
Actually, SUSE supplies downloadable .ISO images of the previous version, and the current FTP tree. All are freely downloadable. In addition, SuSE is _VERY_ big in assisting the Linux community in X support. They have bitten the bullet and bought the specs for a number of video cards to develop servers that would have never made it to the Linux community otherwise. They also provide a number of commercial packages, since they (unlike many of the Linux 'mob') realize that people _will_ pay for good software that works, that free OS and commercial software can co-exist, and that there's nothing wrong with that concept.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Glad to hear it.
:P
But I'm still going Debian when 2.2 is stable.
This sig is false.
Machine! You should be so lucky!
I have an abacus, with shifting magnetic field to make the beads represent raw binary!
And at night, turn reboot my machine, I have to touch my tongue to the power supply!
...Sorry, Monty Python....
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
A Pentium III -- what a wimp, using somebody else's ready-made CPU.
My CPU doesn't even have transistors, it uses electromagnetic relays hand-made from old paperclips and rubber bands. And toggle switches -- a real programmer just touches the bare wires together.
Kids these days.
-- Alastair
The demo is an ISO image of a live filesystem. You can download it, burn it and boot from it to "Try out" SuSE 6.1.
Skippy
"False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
In the past, I've been all for supporting Redhat, and buying the boxed package for 40 dollars, since I knew a good amount of that money was flowing back into the community (Reganomics? Ack!). But I think $80 dollars is a bit much for a free operating system, especially when the latest SuSE is going for 20 dollars, and of course there is always Cheapbytes. But I felt good knowing I was supporting Free Software Development, considering I'm a beginning coder myself. But this 80 bucks crapola reminds me more of a certain other 0$ company that starts with the letter M, than a OSS package. I'm disappointed Redhat. $40 is reasonable, $80 is just out of range for me.
You can whistle? I had my lips ripped off in the war. The dog tore out my tongue. I am sending this by pulling my shorts up REAL tight and singing (screeching) into the phone. That's the only way I can send data. How do I read it? My dog is trained to hear a modem squeal and draw the page in the sand.
Computers.... Who needs em?
:P
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
http://www.polo.demon.co.uk/emporium.html sell the cheapbytes CDs; I got RH6.0 for two quid...
I agree with most of what you wrote. By the way: You are right that SuSE 6.1 ships with a very bad GNOME package. But the original GNOME SuSE packages from the GNOME homepage install without a problem and work very well. There only is a minor problem with YAST that always wants to overwrite two libs with the ones on CD, but you just have to click "cancel" to stop it from doing so during install. I think it was just a matter of "timing": When SuSE froze its distr, GNOME wasnt really ready yet.
Thanks for clearing that up (the part about SuSE not wanting to spawn a knock-off distro).
:)).
Does TurboLinux use any proprietary or non-Open Source stuff in its install or setup? I've been thinking about switching over to it (or maybe I'll just stick with the Cheapbytes-RedHat devil I know
Check your facts.
1996: Telia begins testing ADSL in Sundsvall Sweden.
1998: Commercial ADSL connections are introduced in sweden.
Suse is quite big in europe and lets not forget linux is very popular in europe I heard somewhere that linux was used on 40% of the computers in germany that gives you an Idea of what Kind of market they have.
Caterpillar intentionally withholds it's earninga until the end of the year ( for tax purposes ) . ...
Cat Always loses for three quarters and then shows a profit ( well , usually shows a profit ) int eh last quarter .
Remember that the US and Germany have totally different ways of collecting and regulating taxes . This could explain why Redhat showed a loss while SuSe showed a profit this quarter .
look at RedHat's spending on Research as well !!
20 % of their income to that alone !!
Impressive
SuSe 6.0 is a very nice system , by the way . I am not bashing it in any way . I am bashing the arguement that is based on the revenue of a quarter ( not a year ) . Success is not measured in Dollars but in usage ( at least in the open source community ) .
Your Squire,
Squireson
" For every complex problem there is an answer that is simple , clear and wrong . " ( Menkle ? )
Or you could get a cable modem or dsl and "apt-get install" or "apt-get dist-upgrade" all day. Less effort that way. :)
If cable modems or DSL are available where you live. In a lot of the U.S., neither are available.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
the only true distro is a manual one, installed via hexediting a hard drive. The rest of you are sell-outs and losers. I have spoken.
First off, what are you using to determine that the speaker is a US citizen? Isn't SuSE supported in German? Isn't Pacific Hi-Tech supported in Japanese? Is the speaker saying that his distro is supported in English, but the target of his snide comment speaks Martian, a non-supported language?
I just don't understand how you could take a JOKE that is showing the flaws in arguments like this and turn it into some form of anti-US statement. Unless you're just trolling. In which case, shut up you moron, you're mother blah blah blah...
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
no...no...no. I like debian just like it is: Free, unless you want to make a donation, which all debian users should periodically, just to be nice. If they don't that's all good too. If youwant a commercial distro, stick with redcrap or SuShit and the like.
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
Leaving the IP blank didn't work. Of course I thought it would, and I did try it as a first step. But it would say that it was an illegal IP address and would put me back in the field for the IP. I didn't want to try something like 0.0.0.0. I just wanted to use some other tool.
Sure, there's a lot of software on the 5 disks, but not somethings that I wanted, like E DR0.15.5.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
My SuSE 5.3 is amazing. I loaded up Redhat 6.0, but switched back. I'm not surprised it makes money, especially when it has such a large marketshare.
Is anyone running SuSE 6.x? Is it as good as I hear?
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
I think SuSE is far too easy, it's nearly like windows, you just have to click here and click there and that's it. You don't get any image of the backend of linux. I think the real linux "freaks" shouldn't use SuSE!
SuSE and the Mandrake distributions are the best distributions for beginners, people who like to get away from the dumb windows world and start with linux but don't have any base knowledge or don't know any background information about linux.
But if you're a real freak and like to experiment and "play" with your linux system, then forget SuSE!
hi!
;-)
... it tells how to install, ;-) the suse book tells you a lot ...
... ;-)
...
;-)
;-) ... (i never found out how :-( rpm sucks ;-)
...
... forehead. it's kind of *raw* unix ... it's fully open
;-) after all they are just ...
i never thought i would write that, but suse
linux installs are a lot easier, faster and
the system runs like a clockwork.
suse europe edition has all the crypto addons
on the cd. so you can do a "full" install without
the net.
yast is really good. linuxconf and the xconfigurator
(or whatever it is called) both want to do the
same thing and you simply don't feel any comfort
using them. (and *need* x for overview and
handling.)
the overall concept in redhat is awful: e.g.
i wanted to download the new xserver, because my
card wasn't supported. ppp setup using the book:
linuxconf textmode cored - ok graphics mode
16 colors, 640x480: linuxconf won't run without
256 colors. ah! linuxconf html with lynx: won't
execute any changes. (redhat 5.2)
well thats it for a normal user, i haven't tried
to use netscape with that resolution
(i had to use minicom & pppd and some routing,
which of course is not beginners stuff)
yast had its suseppp stuff integrated and it
worked at first try. (suse 5.3/6.0) funnily they
changed it in 6.1 to a graphical tool, but there
is a "doing it by hand" section in the book.
thats the next thing. the redhat book is a book
microsoft would ship
configure & ciao
more backgrounds and tries to explain complex
things too. e.g. the bootloader chapter is better
than any howto i found
now bad things about suse too
(finally
suse however doesn't like gnome
both use rpm and install packages you didn't
select
(really - no fun!! no auto-select-dependencies)
and yast always complains about packages other
programs *need*, like one command line program
has a beta tcl/tk script and now the package
needs: X,libXf***,TK,Tcl,libTclAddon99
if you force it, you get the message every time
you use yast install
to tell rpm to forget about dependenies *i*'m
in controll of
suse updates simply work (5.3 -> 6.0 not
recommended because of libc). suseconfig is
something you can get along with (after some
hacking). however you *need* to get used that
/etc/rc.config the *the* script. control of
everything in one file
redhat is a nice system, but just because it
from the us it's not the best. it needs
more than that. i guess suse will spread to
the us too and on the other hand i also guess
redhat will/is doing better in the future (i just
can't buy every redhat edition just too test it,
too little time.)
suse is easier to control and faster during
the installation. i tried both, i use both, but
i prefer suse and i recommend it for beginners
too.
well i left out a lot of distributions. so
finally i have to mention debian. the package
system is better. the package selector is a pain
in the
without a fancy envelope
source. (afaik yast is binary only, redhat
includes binary only stuff too.)
i would say: beginners go with suse, and advanced
users should try suse or debian. if you like
redhat stay with it
flavors of LINUX, so they all taste good, but
some people prefer strawberry and others like
kiwi better
so why did i write all that? i don't know, but
maybe you get a grip why suse *could* be better.
CU,
Armin
Ok, so Suse is bought more than Redhat. What does this tell us? American Linux users prefer to download free OSes rather than go pick them up at the local software outlet? Who wins in this scenario? The American consumer.
On ALL mirrors that SuSE lists, ONLY 5.3 and 6.0 are available for download. 6.1 is $50 though. And for a long time there was only the 6.0-evaluation available. (the iso is available for the evaluation copy as well)
RedHat put 6.0 out for ftp installs at the same time it shiped to the stores.
When I said RedHat is cheaper, that is because you CAN get the newest version from Cheapbytes, or for free. The box is $80 but that is if you want the application CD. You really only need the binaries and source. With SuSE you cannot do that.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
> "Oh yeah, well my distro is supported in my
... (sigh)
> native language, at least!"
US citizen? oh well
FYI: non-US citizens *hate* US letter paper format, not supporting ISDN, transatlantic keyboards and the American way of Life.
autodetection, but didnt find my wierd stuff
and RPM managment to me seemed HORRIBLE. I cannot understand how this came to be so popular. I would only
recommend Redhat to people new to *Computers*. 2/5
Debian, after using SuSE and redhat feels soooo nice. Forget dselect, it is worse than any package manager in SuSE or
Redhat, stick with dpkg -i [packagename] and apt!!! Apt is great.
Well, like everything in Linux, there's more than one way to do anything. Don't like GnoRPM? Me either - I just `rpm -Uvh filename.rpm`. If it's on an ftp server? No problem - if I really wanted to, I could write a wrapper script that tries to use an RPM I've got locally, and if there's a newer version, FTP it in.
Debian is good if you already know a bit about computers and partitioning and stuff, it seems the most "linuxy" dist. To
get hardware going you dont use any horrible sndconfig or whatever programs, you just do an easy, powerfull kernel
compile (im sure redhat can be the same here, but debian doesnt have all that extra useless software). To configure a
program you start up vi in
as a gateway. I would recommend Debian for anyone wanting to run a "neat" and "elegant" dist. It gets 6/5
Anyway, im really not suprised that SuSE has bigger sales than redhat considering how much better it is.
RedHat unstable? Granted, 6.0 had a few flaws, but a few upgraded packages have made my systems even more stable than 5.2. And hey, if you don't want to use sndconfig or anything like that, no big deal. I configured my soundcard using make xconfig, and editing my isapnp.conf in good old vim. You don't have to use the GUI tools - I generally avoid them since I like to stare at the guts of my system's configuration.
I might be totally wrong here... but I have an attempt at a guess as to at least one of the causal factors.
:P
From what I know (and I could be wrong), the US has a lot more high-bandwidth connections available at reasonably low cost, be it cable modems, [A]DSL, or just plain university networks. Therefore, it is very much feasible to think that a lot more people in the US just download Red Hat without paying than might download SuSE in Europe, due to the simple fact that it takes too damn long to do so unless you have a good (ie. 128k or higher) connection.
But I could be completely wrong.
On a related note: does cheapbytes ship to Europe? (or similar companies?) If not, that would be another factor.
Of course it could just be more people buy SuSE
Or it could be the amount of $$$ RH spends on GPL'd r&d.
Who knows.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
" He did not want to answer direct questions about an IPO, though. "
Redhat files for an IPO, Suse sees that they're as big as Redhat, why not go for it too. Once they actually file, the SEC won't let them make press releases like this one, so they need to get the PR machine up and running before they file.
German accounting is much more conservative that American. Often German accounting practices hide tons of profit. This is what is driving American investors batty. They cannot figure out how much wealth a German company has.
It's proprietary because it CAN be. I don't know why people seem to think that having a free and open OS means we need to have every bit of code we run on our systems free and open. If I had the money, and they hadn't all-but opened the license, I would have paid for StarOffice (I got it with my new SuSE 6.1 distro, which rocks, BTW, though it seems to be lacking some package entries). Why? Because it works, and I like it, and if someone can make something that I need, like, and want, and it works, then I have no problem paying them for their time so that I can better use mine.
Besides, it's an INSTALLER. What do you need it for other than to install their distro from their CD's? If you're THAT bent on getting a replacement, go look at dialog and code your own package and administration manager, sheesh.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
I know this is a little off topic, but what the hell ever happened to Ygrassil Linux and Craftworks Linux?
I just got a copy of SuSE 6.1 a few days ago and and going to install it soon. It really looks sharp - 5 CDs and a decent manual !
I've been watching and 'lurking' in the Linux scene for a long time waiting for it to mature, and am now finally taking the plunge.
"We learn most when we have to invent"-Jean Piaget
On my home machine I simply downloaded Slackware 3.5 and have upgraded from source for every update I needed/wanted. It's much simpler, gives you much more control over your system, and helps you to learn a lot about the whole linux software cycle. IE: ls cd, etc. are all bundled up in one little package by the GNU dudes, which is really simple to install, etc. and even comes with example rc scripts. After about a year this system is much nicer software wise than any of the latest greatest, whizbang linux distro out there.
Quandary in the Making
Well, I'm using a Linux web browser, but I'm also using Junkbuster which would show up as an old version of Mac Netscape in your stats, so who knows what one can conclude from your 1%
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
As I see it, everyone's missing the point...
1) If you look at the balance sheets from the IPO posting, they're making a ton of money and reinvesting it in themselves, as they should instead of sitting on cash.
2) Red Hat has been spending heavily to strike up many of their strategic alliences with businesses like Atria, Oracle and many others.
3) Red Hat is positioning themselves to be a "Linux for Business", not [just] for the hobbiest - that's why they give their releases away. They know most people would copy it even if it wasn't freely distributed. Businesses want a company they can rely on for support of their machines O/S's, and that's the service Red Hat provides and sells along with ushering in the big companies to port to Linux (or Red Hat's version) and help legitimize Linux as a business platform. No shame in that, and people shouldn't get into the holy wars of "best distribution" because that's not what Red Hat is doing -- they are trying to get business to embrace Linux.
--
Don't forget, anyone can make copies of RH and sell em. The US$79 in only for the "Official" RH from RH.
I got my RH6 for US$12 (including S&H). Or, if you are so lucky - download it from the net.
So far I've no complaints w/ my RH 6.0 running on my Tochiba labtop (Satellite 2535CDS)
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
If I look at the operating systems that all my friends use I can say that the percentage of Linux is much higher than 1%. All of them use Windows in one form or another (95, 98, NT) but almost half of them also run Linux on the same machine.
It's always difficult to get good statistics without a representative group. Counting the percentage of Linux by looking at Slashdot's access statistic won't give yoy the real picture. Nerds like Linux so the number will be higher than the real picture.
Windows 95/98 is used for gaming, Linux/NT for the more serious stuff.
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
Better yet, "alias ls='ls --color=auto'"... this avoids those crazy ESC sequences showing up under less. :)
Companies in the US at least keep two sets of books: one done using GAAP for financial reporting purposes and the other for taxes. The financial accounting numbers are the ones you see in SEC filings and such and are totally separate from the way taxes are calculated.
A more interesting question is the difference between US and German accounting systems. My knowledge of German accounting is very sparse.
it seems to me that at Expo RedHat had TWO parties with free alcohol...compared to SuSE's crappy one
:)
night with a line up a mile long to even see the one free keg. jeez.
Whoa - you're wrong there. I hung out quite a lot w/ "Stacey from LinuxExpo" - the tall blonde haired girl that was cooridinating the expo and asked why that party was such a shitty one.
It's *NOT* SuSE's fault. That party was supposed to be the same as the one at Jillian's but the resturtant/club where it was held fucked up.
They were charging ppl for everything, when it should have been free beer, wine, and soda till 9.
By the time the blunder was realized, it was too late to do anything about it. That's why they made all those announcements in the begiing b/c The Warehouse (I think that was the place) was in error, not SuSE.
So - next time try and be a little more informed before you speak.
p.s. I wasn't all that impressed w/ Red Hat's private party either. As I recall, they ran out of beer and that punch stuff 1/2 way through the party. The canoli's (sp) were good though.
-Jae
The latter doesn't necessarily imply the former; Noorda's personal wealth may have come from other sources - Novell, say, to pick a hypothetical source at random. :-)
Did you even read what I wrote? I don't see it as Red Hat ripping me off, I see it as, I'm helping give Red Hat money so that they can help the OSS community. Of course, I can't really rationalize 80 dollars with the money I earn, so I can't help the community. I feel Red Hat's going super-commercial-and-charging-way-to-friggin-much- for-a-_free_-os. So I'll just get Linux another way, probably SuSE, since I can afford their product, and some of the money I spend on them helps OSS. And are you sure about the phone support? RH 4.2,5,5.1, and 5.2 sure as hell didn't have phone support, just "e-mail support" which only helped with Installation problems, and was painfully slow, as well as lasting only thirty days. The short story is, it sucked. I've been a customer of redhat, and in the past, they've had serious issues with out of the box installations. I just can't justify 80 dollars for that, and "e-mail support"
gee, I'm going to rip on a person who seems to have justified reasons to believe what he believes, because that seems to be the cool thing to do these days.
Man. I think I'll make my sig, "Don't be a jackas."
*nod*
-- No, no -- Not that one!
So we can finally decide to stop the Red Hat bashing. :-/
;-)
But then I have a question, which of Red Hat and SUSE bring back most to Linux? Red Hat pays kernel hackers (Alan Cox and others) and GNOME programmers. I know that SUSE makes X servers but not much more.
Well, I use Debian anyway but to me the company that pays Alan Cox is more likely to get my money.
I think in the future when Linux grows even more we will have stars like in sports where people want someone they can identify themselves with. Could Alan Cox be such a star? Well maybe not for the big masses.
Embrace Linux and all the free development that has been done but create an excellent installer that adds much value (extend) and only offer it to those that purchase your distro. If this is true of SuSe, I will never use it. Why, because you are allowing yourself to become dependent on one company - much like MS has done to much of the world. What if MS ported the Win32 API and the Windows shell to Linux, offering all the source for to Linux for free, but charging for their distro and only alowing the port to exist on their distro. I doubt that anyone here would buy it - but it is the same idea.
just my $0.02
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
At one point in time, SuSE was selling a "german slackware". Then they created their own distribution based on Jurix by Florian La Roche (they hired Florian), plus YaST, and some other goodies. Slackware was not the basis of modern SuSE.
-josh
Have you ported any GNU software to your
machine? Don't forget to publish your changes
to the source code before selling it to
another tribe!
You know, I kinda glanced and read a few posts on this thread, and started saying to myself, wha'ts the big deal ? Everyone has their own preferences in life, its the same with linux. For one reason or another we find this/that distro to be more user friendly/installable/configurable, etc. The diversity of linux is a good thing, imo. Im a total linux newbie, I switched (built separate box actually for it) over this last december, mainly to learn a new OS that I think is going to be the wave of the future. I dont care who's bigger/better, I think every distribution is donating stuff in some way. I think this is what makes linux kick ass and be as stable as hell. So lets not bitch too much about who's bigger/better, find your favorite flavor and learn it. As a whole, linux is the better OS and we all know it. Got a spare computer ? Put linux on it and give it to a friend for www and email and wordprocessing (wordperfect8 - you do risk becoming permanent tech support tho :/) . That will spread linux like nothing else can.
Im sorry, but my thoughts are really wandering here (beer), but all im trying to say is linux in general will benefit from what each distro will/is contributing, and I dont think any one distro will become the next M$, becuase of the public liscense.
/drunk rant
blah ?? how about Blah Blah .. ?? ;-)
RedHat might have reported losses, but they charge less for their distribution and thus enjoy a lot more installations.
Actually, RedHat (as of 6.0) charges more than SuSE. RedHat's list price for their Official 6.0 box is now $80, compared to SuSE's list price for their Official 6.1 box which is still $50.
The price differential is one of the primary reasons I bought the boxed version of SuSE 6.1 instead of the boxed version of RedHat 6.0.
I will probably want to put RedHat 6.0 on a couple of my boxes which currently have RedHat 5.2 on them, but I think I will just buy the CheapBytes CD (for $2 plus shipping, or about $10 total).
Incidentally, CheapBytes and/or LinuxMall also sell cheap CD-only versions of SuSE 6.1, Mandrake 6.0, Debian 1.3 and 2.1, and Slackware 4.0, Stampede and even FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD for those so inclined.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
The SEC is US-only. SuSe is German.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
I keep my threshold at -1 anyway. :)
FWIW, I think this whole thread should be a 5.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
In contrast to popular belief, the source of YaST is on the CD. It is just not GPLed. For your own use you can mess with it as much as you want.
Life is too short for crappy pictures.
Actually SaX is somewhat overrated. There are many cards it doesn't work with properly including ATI Mach64 and Nvidia Riva 128. But I get the same problems with XF86Setup.
ConfigXF86 rules anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
lack of cheap CD's is a real cost issue
I believe that LinuxMall does have cheap (
lack of cheap CD's is a real cost issue
I believe that LinuxMall does have cheap (less than $5) SuSE 6.1 CD's. The $27.50 list InfoMagic 6-CD "Linux Developer's Resource" CD set includes SuSE 6.1 (of course it also includes RedHat 6.0, Caldera OpenLinux 2.2, Slackware 4.0 and some other stuff). So there may not be as much of a cost issue with SuSE as an awareness issue.
Dohh. I got burned by being too lazy to preview!
I always forget those pesky greater and less thans in the text.
If you don't want to use YaST you don't have to. It's still Linux without it, it's just Linux for adults.
IMO YaST has its limitations anyway. Better in every respect to use the Caldera-sponsored COAS if you can. That is at least distribution agnostic and if it ever gets adopted by RedHat, SuSE and the rest, that will answer one of the outstanding criticisms of Linux (sysadm tools differ too much between distros).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I am wondering lately if there is any cooperation among Linux users or do we all fight, flame and put down what people use for their dist.
I seen this when I read the Gnome vs. Kde posts and now it is here about SuSE6.1. Well I have used Slackware, RedHat5.2, and recently bought Suse6.1 and thought it was great. But I am not going to bash The dist. because they are Great to. It has taken me awhile to find thje dist. I want to use and for now it will be Suse.
Maybe we should find something to agree about for once or we may tear the community apart.
I seem to have struck a nerve. Actually, this is something I have thought a lot about. What SuSe is doing, while in not on the same degree of magnitude as what MS *could* do - it is a similar idea.
I don't love RH - I, like Linus, appreciate what they are doing to bring Linux to the masses. I don't think Linux should remain some elitist OS for techie nerds only. Let the whole world be free I say (we have enough privliged peoples in this world). Further, _EVERYTHING_ RH does (like many other distros, but not SuSe) is GPLed - this to me is far more important than how many corps. port products to distro X or distro Y. On the other hand, if a proprietary distro (that is what SuSe and other companies are if they keep portions of the OS non-free) takes the majority of the market and everyone starts porting to only their distro, then we have a potential MS all over again (at least an all GPLed distro can be legally copied and rehashed into a compatible distro).
I just call it like I see it. Maybe it is you who should think twice before posting. Linux is my passion and I've been at it for a couple of years now. I've tried many of the distros - Slackware, Debian, OpenLinux, RedHat, PowerLinux...(on a side note, I've even tried FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc) My Linux/BSD collection is starting to look like that of AOL disks. In all, I have been very happy with RedHat from both a tech. and phylisophical point of view.
I would hardly consider myself an "outsider"
BTW - try posting as a non-AC, it gives your argument more credibility.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
People who buy inexpensive copies of linux distro's generally have a good reason. Usually, a lack of money with which to purchase the full version. In the end, though, if we expect linux to really reach as high as it can, then either buying the official version of RedHat, SuSE, Caldera (or any one of the other commercial linuxs), or donating money to the Debian project, the FSF, or any other not for profit group, is in all of our best interests. Money makes the world go round these days. Just my two cents.
-Mike
SuSE sucks... blah blah blah blah.... YaST proprietary.... blah blah.... SaX is proprietary.... blah blah blah.... Red Hat is like Microsoft.... blah blah blah.... Use Debian.... blah.... Stupid German-language install.... blah blah blah.... Distribution flamewar.... blah blah.... Slashdot is biased.... blah blah blah blah.... Code Fork.... blah blah.... BSD.
There, that should just about cover it. Just go ahead and just respond to this thread now.
Wow, you have access to electricity? I envy you rich kids. You may be pampered throughout life, but I bet you folks sure get to live it up.
I've been doing DNA computing, using sequences derived from my own blood. Concocting a cheap replacement for the gel electrophoresis was the hardest part. I was able to save and recycle enough Jell-O to do it, and instead of running an electrical current over the gel I've been blowing gently on the DNA sequences to seperate them out by length.
Even though I've lost a lot of blood, it's really worth it to get to read slashdot. I don't think I'd faint quite so often if I didn't have to waste so much computation time on adfu.blockstackers.com. But it's still worth it. Go Linux!
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
So while your point about money making the world go round is good up to a point, it isn't the only thing.
>Of course, SuSE doesn't come anywhere NEAR Redhat when it comes to hype and FUD.
Actually they exceed RedHat. It's just all in German.....
"Well, my distro's company has 135 people on-staff, and yours only has 127."
"Oh, yeah, well, my distro uses the latest version of the KNODE desktop, and yours defaults to an older version of GNM!"
"Oh yeah, well, my distro has version 1.0.3a of libdumbthing, and yours is stuck at version 1.0.3!"
"Oh yeah, well my distro is supported in my native language, at least!"
"Oh yeah, well my distro's company channels 127% of their profits into development of Open Source software for getting food to Vietnamese orphans!"
"Oh yeah, _VIETNAMESE_ orphans... that went out with glibc 2.0. My distro's entire staff pays $25/hour for the privelege of contributing to the code, into a fund to educate Laotian children to program in Java."
"Whatever."
"Moron."
Do you mind sharing the statistics on the remaining 99%? It might be interesting in its own right.
Help fight continental drift.
Am I the only one tired of people complaining about the price of Linux Distributions?
If you don't want to pay $80 to use RedHat then
don't complain about it. You can still buy the $35 version of RedHat, or if you don't want to spend that much you can pay $2 and get it from CheapBytes.
I really don't think price should be a determinative factor in your decision to buy, unless you are interested in where your money is going. Then I think it actually pays to look at whether you want to support the good people at debian or redhat.
As for suse, I have to argue with the guy who said that they give back to the community because they give a copy of their cd to all developers whose work they publish. That's not giving back to the community. RH paying Alan Cox to code is giving back. Debian doing what they do (I am stumped right now) is giving back. Suse bragging about their profits is not giving back as much as they could be.
I have access to access statistics on a major German web site - only 1% use Linux browser.
Where did you get that number from?
things. take. time.
Becuase accounting standards in Germany and the US are quite different. US accounting standards are very conservative when compared to the accounting standards of most European countries. Whatever "Profit" SuSE earned may be a loss if their books were calculated according to US GAAP.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
If you think a Red Hat monopoly would be bad, imagine a world with a SuSE monopoly. Red Hat has invested a lot of money to further free software development: RPM, hiring Alan Cox, Gnome, now even a KDE developer. Everything they write is GPL. What has SuSE done? They release some proprietary X servers and contribute some code to XFree86. That's all I can think of off hand. Their distro is also loaded with freedom subtracted products.
It's important to remember that 'losses' or
'gains' in any quarter or year are all a matter
of accounting, especially for a these relatively
young and small companies.
In some situations it
is better for them to report losses and avoid paying income taxes than to report huge gains and end up paying taxes on them.
Without a serious analysis of the two companies'
financial situations, I wouldn't put much stock in the article.
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
i dont think SuSE is giving away its distro on ftp site, only "demo??" but they do help with X servers i think
---
For what it is worth... the general rule of
thumb for US businesses is that during the first few years of operation they want to post a small
loss -- particularly if they are looking to obtain
investors. There are tax reasons for this, but
the general logic is that a company should not
show a profit for the first few years so that it
is clear that they are reinvesting their receipts
into development of the business.
Incidentally, I have RH6 because that's what they
had at work, but I'd agree SuSe is probably the
better dist.
>From what I know (and I could be wrong), the US
>has a lot more high-bandwidth connections
>available at reasonably low cost [...]
>But I could be completely wrong.
No, you are pretty much correct. If you take Europe in general, the net is not used as much as in the US. There is a small area that is different - Scandinavia has far ahead of the US in most areas (I believe 60% or more use the net regularly in Sweden and Finland, 50% have mobile phones and so on) but there are so few of us. Net usage in England, Germany and the Benelux area is pretty similar to the US, but the major reson that downloading is used less is what another poster mentioned below - metered calls. Telephone monopolies have held Internet development back in Europe. Right now users in Sweden are going berserk against partially state owned Telia. Most people claim that they are holding back ASDL so they can milk the last drops of money out of yesterday's technology ISDN. Telia say that the ASDL technology is immature and so plagued by problems when they tested it it was essentially useless.
But its changing. Telia was a complete state owned monopoly before, and they are supposed to open up more and more until they are almost completely private (Though there are problems in transition. They start fighting against other tele companies from an unfair advantage - a virtual monopoly. But now that they are partially privately owned you can't order them to for instance let other companies use their cables without paying.)
>On a related note: does cheapbytes ship to
>Europe? (or similar companies?) If not, that
>would be another factor.
There is a company called Informagix or something like that that sells a 6 CD package for maybe $10. It used to contain Red Hat, Debian, Slackware and several sites and books with documentation on CD. I haven't bought it in a while so I don't know. Maybe they have dumped Slackware and included SUSE instead by now.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
cutting a piece of paper in half decently with less trouble than it would take to go buy paper of another size :)
Electricity! That is for weaklings - my machine is based on a design by Charles Babbage - gears, levers and other mechanical implements - all driven by weights and chain. It operates and is programmed in octal, entered via a modified mechanical typewriter found in an antique shop near me. Display output is accomplished via a board made up of many small little flipping tiles, with one hell of a complicated gearing system to select row/column pairs to make a crude (but effective) bit-mapped display. Printing is done via a Guttenberg (sp) style machine, with automatic type setting. And lets not forget storage - a very large multi-tier cube (10 meters on a side!), individual bit cells filled with buckshot or left empty to represent bits!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Who needs Pez-prozac when we have this!
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Ignoring all the hate flowing between the two of you, I'd like to say that I thought about RH6.0 pretty much the same way. I was standing in Best Buy (I know, I know), holding RH6.0 and SuSE 6.1 in my hands. RH was $74.99 and SuSE was $39.99. I thought, well, I don't need the RH support, so I should just buy the $40 version off the net, or better yet just go to CheapBytes, but then I don't get it _right now_.
/opt, panel conflicted with another binary "panel" that was higher up in the $PATH that comes by default, and the GNOME panel wasn't being used. BTW, the panel that was used was some sort of demo, and just hung my X Server when I exited Enlightenment before killing it. I hate having to hard reset. Thanks, SuSE!
So I bought SuSE. I installed SuSE. I now don't like SuSE. Since I don't use KDE, life pretty much sucks for my X environment. Sure it ships with Enlightenment. DR0.14. BLEACH! Sure I could install GNOME. Since SuSE was good enough to install it in
Now came time to set up networking. I have to say that I prefer linuxconf (which sucks) to YaST (which sucks more). YaST navigation is even goofier and less intuitive than linuxconf; how do you back up from nested menus? If you enter it by hitting the right arrow, wouldn't you expect that you should use the left arrow? NOPE! Try hitting the escape key, THEN the left arrow. Cool. But anyway, since PPP configuration is buried in some menu in the networking section, I didn't even find it right away. Then, when trying to set up my dialin, there didn't seem to be a way to configure dynamic IP; when I try to leave the IP blank, it complains that it's an illegal option. Ok, one of the GREAT THINGS about SuSE is that it ships with a huge manual. Refer to the PPP config section. Any way to configure dynamic IP in there? Not detailed in the manual. Fine. I'll start installing some RedHat tools like netcfg; since this is all RPM based, should be easy, right?
Most, if not all, of the RPMs have different names from RH RPMs, so all of my dependancies are popping off. Gee, I love using the --nodeps --force flags, don't you? So, rather than do that, how about we fulfill all the dependancies? After 4 hours last night, I still have about 10 packages to download (SRC RPMs, by the way, since RH6.0 is glibc2.1 and SuSE isn't; not really upset about this, though, just different and not bad) and rebuild!
I've got so many RH RPMs on my SuSE system, that I might as well have waited the 4 days for shipping and bought RH6.0 from Cheapbytes. It would have saved me the equivalent amount of time spent trying to get SuSE to work the way that I wanted it to.
So, overall, I have to say that SuSE is just not my cup of tea. I'll get it all set up, and when my company buys RH6.0, I'll probably borrow the disks and install it at home, completely wasting the $39.99 that I spent in trying to save time & money. Don't make the same mistake, use RedHat if that's what you've used up til now. Or give Debian/Rawhide/Mandrake/Slackware/Pacific Hi-Tech or whatever other distribution a try. Or, if you don't mind losing GNOME and want to use KDE apps for all of your network stuff, then use SuSE. Thanks for the flexibility, SuSE!
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Why free for personal use? Why couldn't I, say, make a complete distro based on SuSE? (Using their installer). All the other GPL based distros don't seem to have this problem (note the number of distros based on Red Hat, Debian or Slackware). Would it really kill them to GPL the installer?
Heck, I use RNA, which I hand-splice with my left ear.
Will in Seattle
I was a former Redhatter also and I've switched to SuSE @ 5.3 and I haven't looked back since. You get all the same features, but easier package management during the install. Redhat is really disappointing with them charging over $50 for its distribution. You get more packages and great flexablity with SuSE.
One last note, I recently went to the PC Expo in NY and there was a linux pavilion (yay!) funded by RH, but unfortunatly they offered nothing but pamphlets. I walked around to Caldera and they offered a free CD. I think that was a great move by Caldera and also that Open Linux 2.2 looks great. First GUI install I've had for linux.
it would be a sad day indeed...just because everyones making money why do you see the need to get in on the action?
Debian can then use the money to...
who needs it? why not start a gui oss and set the standard for installers using free oss labour rather than buying into false economics?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Then again, I'm too cheap to pay even a couple of bucks for a distribution CD. Not that I wouldn't mind having one around - I had to borrow one here not too long ago because I spazzed and removed my v5 libc from my root partition and forgot that /sbin/mount was still using it.. ;)
not the case in .au, goto lsl where they have gpl'd copies of every flavour for as cheap as $AUS5...but then again it's in melbourne 'bout 2000Mls fm whre you are....cant see any reason that distributors have not set up shop?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
i did a little poll on our local LUG page, and found out there was more linuxPPC user than caldera, well both were around 1% anyway :-/ (450 votes)
---
I approve more of Red Hat's current policies. SuSE strikes me more as a young Red Hat, before they learned that bundling proprietary software for profit wasn't what they wanted to be doing.
Of course, you get much more software with SuSE, which is why when I got my Red Hat CD, I got an archive of software to go with it.
Remember, people, it isn't about the money...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Seriously, how many file servers, print servers, database servers, or comm servers use a browser?
...
I've got five boxes - I only browse from two of them. One of the ones I browse from is a Win98 machine and one is a Win95 machine.
So, does that mean 0% Linux, when the other three boxes are 2 Linux servers and 1 iMac? I don't think so
Will in Seattle
Will in Seattle
WHY is the installer proprietary? Why won't they open it up? (source code for installer)
Then maybe they could pay someone more for a gnome programming manual. :)
Durring my sport shooting in school we used German rifles and learned all about German perfection
Pah!
I'm German myself (and as such perfect, by definition), but even I would prefer a Finish rifle anyday (I used to use Finish Lions - very nicely crafted, well balanced, and simply a joy to squeeze that trigger...)
But considering only the OSes which run servers (FTP, HTTP, News), so a survey done by leb.net ( The Internet OS Counter) shows 42.7% Linux in the .DE domain.
In detail:
- 59.8% of all FTP-Servers run Linux
- 37.8% of all Web-Servers run Linux
- 31.8% of all News-Servers run Linux
Yes, Linux is really very popular in Germany.Markus Senoner
That should, I believe, be "esr" not "rms," unless you know something no other /.er knows =)
Singing: Oh, the life of a pedant's for me ...
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Having used Debian and Redhat and Suse in the past (of course staying with Debian) I thought i might let ya all know what differences ive noticed. Ive never used Slackware but i reckon it sounds very nice too. :[) without having to recompile the kernel so much. Its configuring programs and RPM managment to me seemed HORRIBLE. I cannot understand how this came to be so popular. I would only recommend Redhat to people new to *Computers*. 2/5 /etc. Debian is verrrry stable unlike redhat or even suse and works nicely on my old 486 25 as a gateway. I would recommend Debian for anyone wanting to run a "neat" and "elegant" dist. It gets 6/5 :).
Suse (my first dist) is very nice for a newbie sysadmin. YaST (in SuSE 5.2) is really a admin friendly and well done piece of software.
It does a lot of what i needed to do by itself.
Unfortunantly SuSE uses RPM by default which is a major setback IMAO. I would recommend this for people new to *Linux*, but know computers pretty well. i would give it 4/5
Redhat makes it a little easier for newbies to get hardware going (just my impression, suse had great hardware autodetection, but didnt find my wierd stuff
Debian, after using SuSE and redhat feels soooo nice. Forget dselect, it is worse than any package manager in SuSE or Redhat, stick with dpkg -i [packagename] and apt!!! Apt is great.
Debian is good if you already know a bit about computers and partitioning and stuff, it seems the most "linuxy" dist. To get hardware going you dont use any horrible sndconfig or whatever programs, you just do an easy, powerfull kernel compile (im sure redhat can be the same here, but debian doesnt have all that extra useless software). To configure a program you start up vi in
Anyway, im really not suprised that SuSE has bigger sales than redhat considering how much better it is.
Even for servers. But I think there is quite a high percentage usage there. OS/2 is also still quite widespread in Germany.
(not that I couldn't be wrong about this; I don't know if it's the FSF or GNU project what does it)
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Downloading is great for most people but in a proffessionall situation thingy, a CD is really *needed* as the install has to be fairly fast and painless or the boss will install NT (not that i have a job or any thing). :).
Anyway, who cares about American Consumers? All they care about is themselves and their firearms
Doesn't Caldera make most of it's money off of it's not Linux stuff. I could be way missinformed but I thought they still owned Dr. Dos which was makin a forture in the embeded systems market, cause its y2k and stable? I could be way off base but that's my .02$
A wise man once said... nothing.
do you know how hard it is to compile KOffice yourself?!?).
& w=2 . QT 2 is finally stabalizing, if you download a beta it shouldn't be made obsolete until the actual release is made. (That is changes in QT shouldn't neccessitate changes in kdelibs that are incompatible with your beta).
Yes.
Though Mico 2.2.7 has been the easiest to compile in a while, especially with instructions http://lists.kde.org/?l=kdedevel&m=92936429524154
You only need kdelibs to compile koffice, not kdebase or the other packages and you can run koffice apps (using the QT 2 based kdelibs) from inside your old kde 1.1 (in fact that's the reccommended way, I reccommend setting up a new user and compiling all the kde2 stuff under that users home directory).
I managed to compile and run kpresenter, killustrator and kspread last weekend but the kword compile died due to an internal error in egcs (1.03). I couldn't work out a way around this. This was a shame as kword was looking good when I last looked at it 6 months ago, and I wanted to see the improvements.
I'm using a RH5.2 distribution (only thing my local shop had). Does anyone know an easy way of upgrading to ecgs 1.1x? The RH rpms seemed to require me to upgrade my kernel which I'm not prepared to do (I have enough bleeding edge software installed and don't want to have to debug kernel problems as well).
that is why i decided NOT to try SuSE. b/c i could not download it freely off the web. but i did try redhat because that installed itself with 2 floppies and an ethernet connection.
Honestly, I was waiting for someone I know to get SuSE so I can install it from their cd. Not to make a point against SuSE's mercantilist distribution but because I did not want to spend $50 for something I might not like better than my Debian installation.
RedHat might have reported losses, but they charge less for their distribution and thus enjoy a lot more installations. That will come in handy when RedHat 6.1 or 7.0 comes out, because more people will want to buy the cd and upgrade, or simply to support the company.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
I always used to love the default color ANSI with Slackware, and was DISTRESSED upon loading RedHat to find the eye-numbing b&w text on screen.
Then I discovered the miracle of "alias ls='ls --color'" and now everything's okay.
But then again, now I'm using Suse 6.0!
**>>BELCH
Only the weak use operating systems. Or screens and keyboards, for that matter. I, a real man, build my own Altair-style boxes and program in the machine-language bytecodes by toggling switches. That's how I'm typing this very message -- on a Pentium III, no less.
Go back to your LOGO coding, weakling.