Novell Not Pushing Ximian Onto SuSE

dhunley writes "According to TechCentral, a recent story on Novell's plans following the acquisition of both SuSE and Ximian comments that 'SuSE will continue (to operate) as a business unit of its own', according to John Phillips, Novell's corporate technology strategist for the Asia Pacific region. 'We don't expect to make Ximian the default user interface, and for the medium term KDE will remain the default GUI on SuSE Linux'."

When can we see Netware replaced with Linux

[PhilippeT]

now that's something I want to see soon. That way those moronic teachers at my college will have to learn Linux or stop telling the world that Netware is the safest and most used Network platform.

This is a good thing

[GeckoFood]

'SuSE will continue (to operate) as a business unit of its own'

I hope so. I have seen Novell buy and ruin several software packages. Probably the most notable (in my memory) was WordPerfect. WP was not as good as it should have been to start with, but it was awful after Novell got done with it.

Another was DR-DOS. DR-DOS never really recovered from Novell's influence (which was before Windows 95 came out, so there was time to undo the damage).

The idea of Novell owning SuSE makes me uneasy. Right now, I like SuSE - been my distro for a while. Might have to change distros, however, if Novell starts playing with it.

Why no QT?

[sflory]

QT is open source and a good library. The only major issue is that it's GPL instead of LGPL like GTK. Depending on your view not being able to link comerial apps for free may be a good thing.

Re:Love Hate With Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, then, you and your business cared nothing for security, open standards, interoperability, stability, reliability, scalability, and high performance.

None of these things come with the "Windows ease of use" that you so love.

They all come standard with Novell products.

The "merging" of GNOME and KDE

[digitect]

Given the general efforts by freedesktop.org [freedesktop.org] and the like to improve interoperability between the two largest free desktops, isn't the so-called desktop war is really a mute point? Sure there are two complete systems, but even as a die-hard GNOME user myself, I still want all the KDE desktop available even if only to occasionally try out some KDE app or feature.

I think keeping both desktops as strong and competitive as possible is the best for all of us. In fact, my concern down the road is that through general merging of functionalities and core libraries (even allowing for C v. C++ differences), the whole thing may become one big homogenous effort prone to stagnation. (The wheel gets so big, it gets harder and harder for the community as a whole to re-work efficiencies or pursue dreams beyond current capabilities.)

Perhaps the (justified) business concern of trying to do too much without focus applies here, but why can't the KDE effort simply fork and find supporting funding if abandoned? If the demand is there, no one business can ever kill off Free Software. Maybe how Novell decides to treat KDE (or Ximian) really doesn't have as big an impact as we think. Does corporate funding really prove to be the most significant factor in a desktop's success or effectiveness?

Re:The "merging" of GNOME and KDE

[The One KEA]

Don't forget smaller window managers like XFce, IceWM, and even FVWM. If KDE or GNOME start to bloat or stagnate or become unsuitable, then I'm sure the three window managers I just mentioned might just see an increase in users.

And that doesn't count all the other window managers out there as well.

Novell wants Mono and RedCarpet

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw Novell's CTO speak at a conference after this announcement and he specifically pointed out that Novell wanted Mono and RedCarpet when they bought Ximian. Sure, there are tons of other reasons why you would want to own and work with Ximian, but those two seemed to be the main point.

The SuSE acquisition was slightly different. They want to port the Netware server functionality to Linux in the short term and possibly replace Netware in the long term. However, they are not creating a Redhat clone company. They intend to make money the old-fashioned way... by licensing enterprise software.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

While you can install a KDE system without GTK+, SuSE does not let you install a GNOME system without Qt. Why?

Because the graphical front-end for YaST, SuSE's multipurpose configuration tool, is based on Qt?

I'd be surprised if SuSE were to drop KDE at any point in the near future, since a lot of their stuff is extremely well integrated. Have a look in KControl, and there's all the YaST modules there, correctly themed and everything. There's the SuSE HelpCentre, which is KDE's help system but for everything that has HTML documentation. If you install or remove something through YaST, KDE's menus and file associations get updated as appropriate.

Last time I checked, a lot of this behaviour is in packages which can be removed if you want a 'vanilla' KDE, but I've left everything there because it's genuinely useful.

Oh, and a pretty normal SuSE installation installs the GNOME support libraries as well, because a fair number of applications use them. It's hardly a conspiracy. :)

Re:Why no QT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on your view not being able to link comerial apps for free may be a good thing.

Yes, but these are not my views. I want to be able to develop commercial and non-commercial apps for free. Qt does not allow me to release closed-source applications for free, even non-commercial ones (i.e., something that is closed-source because of NDA on the hardware that it controls, but would otherwise be released as free-as-in-beer software). That's why I try to remove Qt from the systems that I install, in order to ensure that none of the members of my team develops something that links with it, even by accident. I don't want to get into legal troubles later. There is more to it than simple philosophical choices.

Re:Good

[rsax]

While you can install a KDE system without GTK+, SuSE does not let you install a GNOME system without Qt. Why?

Because YaST requires KDE libs.

I've said it before

[rsax]

And I'll say it again,

"Ximian, SuSE and Novell will continue to deliver projects to the community where it makes sense," he said.

The first sign that I see of Novell trying to pull a Redhat Fedora on us SuSE users I'm going to switch to Debian for good. I know I'm probably reading too much into this but I can't help it, I'm cynical by nature and when I first read about SuSE being acquired by Novell that was the first thing that crossed my mind. And still does. I should probably look into what kind of effort would be required to maintain a some what custom Debian release of my own based on stable but with newer packages from testing or unstable. That was the main reason why I originally went with SuSE, stable releases with more recent packages. Otherwise it would be Debian all the way.

Re:Honestly.

[rfinnvik]

NDS was launched in '93 with Netware 4.0
NT3.51 was launched in '95.

Even though NDS was fairly unstable until 4.1x, they still were doing stuff with NDS that we had to wait until Win 2000 for Microsoft to do with AD.

I think Novell became a victim of its own success - they were used to admins queing up to get their CNA/CNEs and basically, they got lazy. Their marketing has always been... pretty bad.

As to other stuff Novell has made... Well, ZenWorks was pretty revolutionary when it came out. A lot of their other products are also pretty damn good, like iChain/BorderManager, iFolder, iPrint...

That's what they bought SuSE for, man...

[smartfart]

Novell knows (just as IBM knows, etc.) that their old proprietary stuff is out. They've ported all or at least most of their applications stack over to Linux, so netware isn't needed. Hence, they can remain a viable company, since their stuff once again works with real-life networks.

Re:Novell showing wisdom

[SockMonster]

Not only KDE, but GNOME has just been compiled for OSX as well

Re:Novell showing wisdom

[twener]

But GNOME doesn't run native on OSX, read it needs an X-Server.

Re:Novell showing wisdom

[ajs318]

That is indeed what I was alluding to. Now KDE and Qt no longer require anything in the "traditional" X11 server, there is a real possibility of someone creating a lean, mean, lightweight display system which sacrifices X's generality of purpose for plain and simple speed in a single situation: running one display on a desktop machine with a known architecture.

Let's face it, X's configurability is a bit of a double-edged sword. XF86Config-4 is an absolute 'mare, and anyone who says different is either lying or an ex-Amiga hacker ;-) Most people don't use the half of what it can do. A directly-rendered desktop environment could be just the ticket to get Linux some credibility.

Re:It's true.

[cbreaker]

You can't compare what Novell is doing now versus what they did 15 years ago.

Way back when, when Novell was "king of the LAN," the computing world was a different place. Even Novell couldn't combat Microsoft and all their tactics.

Novell is a solid company, they've made solid products. I wouldn't brush them off quite yet; Linux and FS has given companies a new avenue to compete in the market once again.