SuSE CEO's Two-Distro World 401
FrankoBoy writes "CRN has an interview with SuSE CEO Richard Seibt in which he claims such things as 'Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else.' Another example of this kind of corporatespeak can be found in another interview he did with ZDNet last week. DistroWatch has an article about all this in its current weekly newsletter."
What other companies are there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What other companies are there? (Score:2)
Re:What other companies are there? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What other companies are there? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What other companies are there? (Score:2)
The latest fired right up into X and KDE with no manual configuration at all, and includes MySQL and PHP now...
Other companies (Score:2, Interesting)
Mandrake is a product of MandrakeSoft [mandrakesoft.com].
UnitedLinux [unitedlinux.com] is the parent company of SUSE [suse.com], the European arm which produces SUSE Linux. There is also the Asian arm, TurboLinux [turbolinux.com], and the South American/Latin arm, Conectiva [conectiva.com]. Yep, all these major distributions fall under the same parent company. So you're pretty accurate in asserting that there's only a few big players
Surely he meant to say (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Surely he meant to say (Score:3, Funny)
What?!? There's only two - SCO and SCO, nobody else!!
Expect to be sued.
Yours, Darl McBride
:)
You know, it's funny (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh well. To me, Linux still means "Debian and Gentoo, and maybe someday I'll consider trying SUSE, but probably not." Redhat and Mandrake are dead to me. ^_^
yep, Suse is cool. (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing is that I actually did try Suse the other day. I downloaded and burned their "Live CD" as part of a lecture [hillnotes.org]. I was very impressed at how well it worked. It really was a no fuss deal. Like you I'll put up with a little meglomania for that. What harm can he really do to free softare? Who really needs large IT vendors? The future is free.
He also says lots of good stuff too. He slams SCO and easily dances around all their FUD. He's creating value and sees himself as a big institutional player. Good for him. No free softare based system can be as ugly or as abusive as Microsoft was.
Re:yep, Suse is cool. (Score:2, Funny)
Oh yes it can!
Just wait until I'm in charge.
When you see the sort of stuff I'm gonna pull, it'll make Microsoft seem like a benevolent-software-monopoly-dictatorship.
Re:You know, it's funny (Score:2)
Debian is a little too hardcore for my tastes though. I recommend Knoppix in place of straight Debian, as Knoppix is a Debian based distro that is easy to get up and running.
I use Slackware. (Score:2, Offtopic)
So I use Slackware. No problems yet and great low end hardware support. Easy to administer too.
I haven't used linux long enough to say my opinion matters though.
Linux Distros are just like Hardrives. (Score:4, Insightful)
The bottom line is, most distros work on most hardware without significant problems. There will always be fanboys who cry for years because they had one or two bad experiences with a Distro.
Wachootalkinbout SuSE! (Score:2)
<sarcasm> We all know Linux is all about SCO </sarcasm>
I almost agree with him (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, my years of using and contributing to Debian (which is not a company) may have skewed my viewpoint somewhat.
Re:I almost agree with him (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is not an OS. Hasn't this been said enough times yet?
-WS
Re:I almost agree with him (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, right (Score:3, Funny)
Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
and Slackware has as strong of a following as ever.
hell, I find slackware to be the only choice for embedded system prototyping or dedicated things like a freevo box or other things you need to be able to strip out the crud to get a fast small system.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mandrake is alive, more or less, but its still in bankrupcy for the time being. Debian isn't a company as such, but it definately warrants mentioning.
The whole quote isn't nearly as bad (Score:5, Interesting)
All he's saying is that in the corporate market most of the support is related to these two companies.
Personally I think he's wrong, but he's not trying to deny the existance of other distros or anything.
It (Score:4, Insightful)
All he's saying is that in the corporate market most of the support is related to these two companies. Personally I think he's wrong, but he's not trying to deny the existance of other distros or anything.
If you look at this, it's wrong no matter how you interpret it. Literally, he left out a damned big company - IBM. Yes, they use Red Hat's stuff, but to say "Linux means two companies - Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else" is just flat wrong on that basis.
If you want to be assume he meant distros, then obviously he left out like 50.
You would have to interpret that as "companies who release their own distros under their own name" for that to make any sense, but by that time, it's irrelevant. The major players aren't the companies making the distros, it's those like IBM getting it on machines. Among companies with distros, only Red Hat (not SuSE!) has had any real impact doing that. SuSE's penetration is far less, especially outside Deutschland.
So, to me, the only sense in which his statement is true is that in which it's barely relevant. Sorry to SuSE, but they have nowhere near the impact of Red Hat or IBM.
Ultimately, he's trying to sound as if SuSE is half of the non-MS world, and that's nowhere near the case
Re:The whole quote isn't nearly as bad (Score:5, Informative)
OTOH, for a small office, just about any distro (NetBSD on the server, yeah) if administered well, would be good.
Re:The whole quote isn't nearly as bad (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a medium sized software company. We certify against Red Hat for our US customers and SuSE for our German customers. We certify against specific releases. For our customers, Linux is either Red Hat or SuSE, and they (and us) refer to those distros' version numbers, not the kernel.
We simply couldn't gurantee things like version changes to glibc might break the small amount of native libraries we ship. PAM is a mess across various distros (so far, each distro needs to be documented separately for PAM setup of our app) and we've even found problems with consistent Java support.
Getting the software to work, and coding smart s only one part of the problem. The fact is that corporate customers expect their product to be QA'd, and QA takes time and money. They also expect technical support, and the time and cost to solve "what distro are you using" problems people may call in with is just not worth it. Maintaining a matrix of distro-patches-kernel-tweaks-hardware issues for any and all distro would be nigh on impossible to do properly. We've have to offer half-assed support and QA if we supported more than a handful of specific distros.
Then there are the services. We have to keep things like LDAP and NIS in a known state, and each distro has it's own disitinct flavour. And the third-parties. We depend on some third-party apps, and these must be certified, at the right level, for each distro, for these exact same reasons. Most enterprise solutions do not exist in a vacuum; most depend on a whole slew of third-party app and integrations into services and devices. Open standards can only go so far in the real world (we've found).
Sorry; I love Linux, but corporate customer have far different needs than I do in my cubicle at work, or on my play box at home. There are just too many unknowns to risk fubarring our customers world. These unknowns exist whether or not an app is well-designed and properly robust.
This is not to say we won't support Debian or Gento or whatever. It just means that until you come along and ask us to support one of those distros or platforms, we will not certifiy it with our app suite. We've done it for FreeBSD for one single customer. We need a business case to proceed with a new platform, and we've found that each distro can behave as if it was just another UNIX platform for us: it needs to be smoke-tested and QA'd, or it will break at the exact wrong moment for our customers.
about his answer on Novell (Score:5, Informative)
Novell needs a new loading OS kernel to build Netware on. DOS certainly has reached it limitations with scalability and security so linux is an obvious solution. They'll still maintain their same environment and NDS tho. But scalability is their main push. E-Directory (NDS) loads on WinNT/2k/2K3 and linux.... but keeping it in its native environment is still the most stable of course.
And the CEO's answer to a question:
CRN: What do you think of Novell buying Ximian? Does this bode well for Linux adoption on the desktop? Seibt: I would take this as a fact that Novell is taking Linux very, very seriously, and it's another fact that they are not concerned about any lawsuit. They simply believe that Linux is something that is a huge value for the customer. Think about what CA [Computer Associates] just did. They did a survey with their customers about why customers are deploying Linux. [Customers] named five reasons: performance, reliability, scalability, security and total cost of ownership, which came in fifth. What does this mean? Everybody is talking about total cost of ownership, and no doubt this is very important, because all of us have to reduce IT budgets. But customers named four other reasons. These reasons are strategic reasons why to deploy Linux.
Well what?
Re:about his answer on Novell (Score:2, Interesting)
On a different subject. Since Novell is hitching its star to Linux, maybe they can help by doing automated comparisons of the Linux code base against System V (similar to what SCO claims to have done) and reporting its findings so any problems can be cleared up and/or SCO's FUD can be countered with facts. They have access to both code
A bit inflammatory, no? (Score:5, Interesting)
C'mon -- the guy is a non-native English speaker and the context makes it perfectly clear what he's saying. He said that from the perspective of commercial Unix vendors, there are two Linux distributions they actively consider.
I'm a Gentoo and Yellow Dog user, but the shrieking in just the first 10 comments is completely misplaced.
Re:A bit inflammatory, no? (Score:2)
Re:A bit inflammatory, no? (Score:5, Funny)
On Slashdot? You're kidding, right?
RTFA. (Score:5, Informative)
He's saying that as far as the corporate world goes, Linux == RedHat | SuSE. If you buy a pre-installed Linux box from some IT vendor somewhere, it will have RedHat or SuSE on it. This is basically true.
So don't jump the gun on tearing this guy a new asshole.
Re:RTFA. (Score:3, Informative)
He's saying that as far as the corporate world goes, Linux == RedHat | SuSE. If you buy a pre-installed Linux box from some IT vendor somewhere, it will have RedHat or SuSE on it. This is basically true.
There are some small companies like HP [hp.com] that also offer Mandrake.
Placing my bets on non commercial distros. (Score:2, Funny)
Only two companies? (Score:4, Informative)
Thats bullshit.
HP/Compaq bundles Mandrake. [mozillaquest.com]
And certifies systems for Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, and TurboLinux. [hp.com]
If HP isn't considerd a "large IT vendor," who is?
Re:Only two companies? (Score:3, Informative)
In the UK, I've been working recently for a number of telcos and banks and without exception SuSE and RedHat are the only distros used for line-of-business applications.
Other distributions, where installed, are being replaced as part of general consolidation and management plans. Support for RH and SuSE from IT vendors such as Oracle and BEA is the main factor, but this coupled with the need to standardize results in
This is ridiculous... (Score:2, Troll)
And if he doesn't take back this silly, new-wave corporo-capitalist nonsense ("Linux is about two companies"? What, is he learning economics from Bill Gates or Darl McBride?), we sh
He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguing about whether or not to use GNU in your name, or which GUI is more "free" than the other is irrelevant to most companies. They want good products, not irrelevant nerd-speak. Red Hat and Suse have forged past the anarchistic free-for-all attitude of hackers and made Linux much more approachable. Anyone who says otherwise is probably just jealous of their success...
He does have a point.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat has pushed Linux into the spot light more than any other company has - ok this is where I get flamed - but honestly what companies other than Red Hat have targeted more than the fat-guru-programmer stereotype nix user. Gentoo and Slackware definaetly don't expect anyone but a power user to even touch there distros. Mandrake trys to be a friendly nix distro, but they constantly beg their users to donate money and can barely keep from going bankrupt. Red Hat and Suse are the only 2 companies that have successfully made money selling linux to both corporations and home users, and of the 2 Red Hat is by far more "KNOWN"
And with appointments of ex suse people... (Score:5, Interesting)
And that McBride comes from being a VP at Novell...
The SCO Group Announces Appointment of Gregory Blepp [yahoo.com]
[OT] Why is SCO stock up so big today? (Score:5, Interesting)
The phrase in context (Score:2, Interesting)
This kind of polarization is usual behaviour when you have several smaller opponents, as a example: political parties in "non-bipartidist" systems use it frequently.
Sigh..quality reporting (Score:2)
2, and I guess 3 commercial entities (IE COMPANIES) produce Linux distro's. Lots of other distro's available from many other sources but NOT COMMERCIALLY PRODUCED....
Misinterpretation... Calm down! (Score:4, Insightful)
He couldn't be more wrong... (Score:2)
Big money in getting a 3% sliver of that 10% market share! Am I right?
Am I right, people?
more knee-jerk fodder... (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, I really don't think that this interview was very interesting.
What seems to have gotten it onto Slashdot was his "only two distros" comment. However, what the person submitting the story left out was one minor detail: context.
He said HP, Sun, etc., are mostly backing off from pushing their own proprietary operating systems and opting to push Linux-based products. In that context, there are two highly relevant Linux distributions: Redhat and SuSE.
Can you name another distro with the resources to provide support to a major hardware vendor deploying Linux?
Isn't it amazing how much less interesting and inflammatory his comment seems with a little context surrounding it?
Most importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
What's most important is that with Linux there is no way that they can prevent any other company that decides to step up and bring a distro to market.
This fact will keep them on their toes via the omnipresent shadow of the unknown competitor just around the corner and it means that even if they decide to abandon Linux ten years from now, any of the other distros can come in a take up the slack.
Right and wrong (Score:5, Informative)
While many vendors do support other distributions than the big two (RH & SuSE) this is mostly on the desktop. Support on the server side for large servers is pretty much restricted to these two. This is true for hardware also If you want support for larger SMP's, SAN, etc there are not many drivers for other distros. Usually you can just go ahead and try, but if something does not work the support line will tell you to replace your distro xxx with RH/SuSE where thei support it.
I've been involved in quite a few new Linux customer projects. All the time third party software (Oracle, SAP, DB2, etc) was involved as well. The only distros which are *certified* to run this stuff are Rh and SuSE. And customers do want certified installations !
Personally I'm happily running debian and gentoo, but I haven't come across commercial installation of these distributions yet.
Markus
In that case... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think he's right (Score:5, Insightful)
After seeing all the outraged comments on here ("Waddyamean he thinks my copy of Gentoo isn't a distro?!"), I'm surprised, because I think he's right (at least, in terms of corporate distros). Before any holy warriors mod me down for saying this, I should provide a disclaimer...OK...here goes...I am a distro bigot, and I would never use anything but Slackware (if it's my decision to make), because all the major distros are disgustingly bloated. Slackware -- it rocks. RH/SuSE/etc -- they suck. Just the facts, ma'am. *ducks*
Now that we've got that important fact out of the way, let's look at Oracle. Last I checked, Slackware, Gentoo, and other distros that lean further toward the hobbyist/programmer/hacker end of things were not supported by Oracle -- it was only SuSE and RedHat. It's not just Oracle -- as a general rule, if you find some proprietary software that they're trying to make a Linux port of, and they name a distro, it's about 90% likely to "support" RedHat and maybe 40% likely to "support" SuSE.
Reason for the quotes around "support" would be that most of the time, a specific distro is not needed. It's the same kernel and most of the same FS setup (well, Slackware's init scripts are a little bit bett^H^H^H^Hdifferent, since they follow BSD instead of SysV). However, naming the distro supplies a corporation with the perfect ass-covering if it's something their tech-support hasn't been trained on. "What, you don't use RedHat? Well, I'm sorry, but we can't support your software. Even though you paid us $5,000 this quarter for gold-level support. It's broken -- you fix it."
It comes of picking something very specific to train $6.50/hr helpdesk personnel who aren't likely to investigate and learn a new distro. Plus a reason I can sympathize a bit more with: If the customer is breathing down the company's neck to fix this problem that they had with a homebrew distro some BOFH in the customer's IT dept. crafted, it will cost a lot of time, money, and perhaps contracts (as the customer gets more impatient) to get it fixed. Better to go with an extremely common standard, even though they are the lowest common denominator in terms of distros.
So I agree -- to the corporate world, there are only SuSE and RedHat distros. The rest just aren't supported.
Distros for Oracle (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it's mostly just RedHat and SuSE that are supported by Oracle. Actually, SuSE just falls under UnitedLinux alongside SCO and some others. Not just any SuSE, either. The personal edition of SuSE you can download for free is not supported. You need Advanced or Enterprise Server versions of RedHat, SuSE, and other distros in order to be actually "supported" by Oracle.
That said, I'm sucessfully running Oracle 8i on Slackware and Oracle 9i on free S
Interesting - a troll embedded in an article. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors."
Tough to argue with that.
The synopsis is a troll (Score:5, Interesting)
He's right, by the way: the IT world is concentrating on SuSE and RH right now. That doesn't mean Gentoo/Debian/Mandrake/Slackware and the rest don't have a place, but none of these distros have done much to get themselves certified for government adoption. SuSE has. Power to 'em.
I like SuSE, and have put 8.2 Professional on five machines in the past few months. My friends love it. It's an easy install, and yast is a convenient manager. SuSE goes naturally with KDE.
The only computer in my life that isn't running SuSE is my iBook, which uses Yellow Dog 3.0. It's tough to beat Terrasoft's Mac hardware support.
I'm happy to buy from a company that's passionate about the platform and knows how to play hardball with Microsoft.
Netcraft says differently (Score:4, Informative)
Despite the abscence of funding, Debian is the second most popular Linux distribution we find on internet web sites, surpassed only by Red Hat, and leaving the likes of SuSE and Mandrake in its wake.
So if Netcraft are to be believed, Richard Seibt seems to be right in that it is a two distro world; its just that SuSE isn't one of them.
I thought it was (Score:5, Interesting)
But then I realized he was referring to "companies". Linux is the way it is because it was made by people who care, and the same can be said (possibly to a lesser extent) about other unices(Linux walks, talks, and quacks like UNIX. So does BSD/QNX/etc.)
Don't get me wrong, I like nearly all Linux distros for the guts beneath them. I just prefer Debian over Redhat/Suse because of the complete lack of commercialization; I can get ALL of the available software in the same interface, with nothing held back "for paying customers".
Re:I thought it was (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gentoo? (Score:5, Informative)
Being able to start from Stage 1 really teaches you a lot about the system, while a Stage 3 (pre-compiled) install allows you to quickly deploy a system and take advantage of the Portage without waiting a full day for KDE to compile.
I think Gentoo is definitely going to be my distro of choice from now on.
Re:Gentoo? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, what I'm enjoying right now is the fact that I know exactly what's on the machine, and that I can add or remove packages at will with a single,
MIHGT I RECOMMENDD GENTOOO? (Score:4, Funny)
Good Day
Re:Gentoo? (Score:3, Funny)
I think they deserved their very own poll option.
hardware support? (Score:3, Insightful)
/joeyo
Re:Gentoo? (Score:2)
The Great Music/Distro Analogy (Score:2, Redundant)
RedHat: Mainstream
SuSE: Classical
Debian: Folk
Slackware: Rock
Mandrake: Country
Gentoo: Techno/Pop
FreeBSD: Heavy Metal
NetBSD: generic drum rythms
OpenBSD: tranquil, stress-relief
SCO: Satanic
Re:Gentoo? (Score:2)
Re:Gentoo? (Score:2)
Thanks in Advance
Re:Gentoo? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyways. First part, is BSD does have
BSD doesn't overload
Re:Gentoo? (Score:2, Informative)
Also, please don't lump FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD together, as if they were just different distros of the same thing. (well mayb
Re:Gentoo? (Score:2)
1) Using the nVidia drm kernel module and XFree driver instantly crashes my computer.
2) My BT848 TV card doesn't actually work right.
Something that Gentoo has over FreeBSD (and not just with regard to my system) are use flags. With FreeBSD ports, adding support for certain libraries often requires passing flags to make, which you typically don't know until you trying to
Re:Gentoo? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean "alternative" as in "same old shit with a different name"? Was that horribly poor comparison on purpose?
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:4, Informative)
Companies. He's talking about companies. Name 3 companies that produce Linux. Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake.
You also have apparently not used SuSE much, nor read all the articles about how popular it really is. It's the Red Hat of Europe, and Mandrake is taking all the scraps on the US and European markets.
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:3, Informative)
> read all the articles about how popular it really > is. It's the Red Hat of Europe,
Really? well... we don't live in the same Europe because SuSE is nothing in the UK, nothing in France, nothing in Spain. While Mandrake is.
Sorry but Europe is not only Germany.
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:5, Informative)
If I want to buy some hardware + software, the only way to get a certified setup with Linux is to buy either Redhat or Suses server products at about $1000. For people running large Oracle or DB2 databases on IBM xSeries or Dell Poweredge servers, this is what they need.
His quote carries on with "There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors". I saw HP were supporting Debian while Bruce Perens was there, but now looking on the HP site everywhere it is RedHat or Suse.
There's definitely going to be more desktop linux vendors, but a lot of them still ride on top of Redhat or Debian, and again a lot of them cater for specific markets.
Please check your facts... (Score:2)
Here's another comment [slashdot.org] refuting your claim, with links.
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:2)
Do you mean technically or in installation numbers? You could argue about the former, but every formal study I've seen has the installation base going "RedHat, SuSE, and then everyone else." I wish I had the links offhand, but alas, I don't have the time to go back and find them.
It's not really much of a stretch to say that SuSE and RedHat are the two big distributions, and that everyone else is a bit player. Even Mandrake doesn't have an ins
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:2)
Everything but the truth!!! SuSE has a very small installed base indeed for a simple reason: their product is proprietary-locked. So it's installed only in corporate environments, while you see RH, Mandrake and Debian everywhere.
Just have a look at http://www.linuxcounter.org or http://www.distrowatch.com to learn about Suse real installed base.
And please stop to spread false informations.
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'm also not sure what he means by "company", because as far as I'm concerned Gentoo Technologies, Inc. [gentoo.org] has the legal status and enough products for sale [gentoo.org] to qualify as a company... and the only Linux company that has made any money off me is Mandrake [mandrake.com].
Re:suse and redhat alone? IDTS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:2)
though you might have to settle for the full 8.2 professional 5-cd set)
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:2)
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:2)
I have no idea what happened to parent commenter's system, so you may very well be correct in this case that he improperly configured LILO. That's the case more often than not. But not always.
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:2)
I'm actually looking to toy around with Linux some. I'd prefer it be easy to install, support a decent array of hardware, and be as painless as possible to gussy up KDE, or Gnome 2.
Then use Mandrake. It's easy to install, it recognizes pretty much everything, and there are lots of mirrors where you can download the ISOs (except right after a new release :). When you decide you like it, join the Mandrake Club to show your support.
try reading the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't know about you - but I see very few other distributions out there on corporate boxes...
Re:here's what the article says (Score:5, Informative)
So, lookes like SeSE has found SCO's secret stash, and/or borrowed Steve Jobs's reality distortion field.
Mandrake makes a decent all-around box (server or desktop), Slackware makes a great server, Debian has its' following, etc.
Re:here's what the article says (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:here's what the article says (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like a jerk to me too, but like the man sez, it's corporatespeak. No matter what happens in the corporate world, we'll always have Slackware and Gentoo and which is fine by me, although if Red Hat and/or Suse can keep working well with the corps, then that's a good thing too. When was the last time you had a beer an
Re:here's what the article says (Score:2)
I don't know if SuSE is in the same position in Europe or not, so I don't know if the quote is accurate over there. It's accurate over here.
(And for what it's worth, I don't run either. I run Mandrake desktops and Debian servers on my LAN. But I'm not a corporate custo
Re:here's what the article says (Score:5, Interesting)
It's my view that the industry has decided there is one main operating system competitor to Microsoft, and that is Linux. Linux means two companies: Red Hat and SuSE, and nobody else. There will be no third distribution that will be supported by the large IT vendors. And from that perspective, even Novell decided not to compete anymore on operating systems. They now migrate all of their applications to Linux. This is a two-horse race between Linux and Windows. [emphasis mine]
So, there! He's giving his opinion about distributions that will be supported by "large IT vendors". He is also talking about Novell bailing out of OS competition. This is a corporate environment.
What is even more out of context is
If you want more, read the question thas was asked as well, and read it carefully, not just copy and paste. The question was:
But is it Unix or Windows that's being used less because of Linux? And will there be a shift in the future toward Linux replacing one or the other? For instance, as Linux on the desktop becomes more prevalent, will it be Windows that's more at risk?
The first question is: What OS is Linux displacing more right now: Unix or Windows? The second question is: As Linux gets more popular on the desktop, what OS will it displace more in the future?
In response to these questions he mentions HP, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, and SCO, out of which his vendor analysis comes out. It is obvious he is talking about corporate server environments supported by "larte IT vendors"!
I see a lot of Debian... (Score:2)
Recommendation: think three times (Score:2)
Is this true of Lincoln, Gandhi, Bonaparte, Hitler, da Vinci, Jesus?
Re:Recommendation: think three times (Score:2)
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:2)
You can say outside of "Germany". Suse is really a German thing that tries to expand to territories MandrakeSoft catched the latest 5 years.
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:3, Informative)
I ran it for a while...switched to it when a Slackware install ate itself. YaST is fairly decent at configuring stuff it knows about, but building/adding "outside" apps gets to be a little tricky. After a couple of years or so, I built an LFS box...once I was somewhat familiar with that, I started building systems around LFS instead, as it delivered a lightweight system with just the stuff you want, and it was usually a bit faster.
Nowadays, I use
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:4, Interesting)
I did find Red Hat limiting for my own applications - and I prefered the way Slackware handles configurations, more 'unix - like'. Since 1994 I have used many different distros, including Turbo Linux, Gentoo, Mandrake, Linux Pro, Suse, Debian, and Knoppix. Over the years I always keep coming back to Slackware (although I use Knoppix as a recovery/utility disk at times - due to its ease of use).
If I had unlimited money and time, I would run Slackware on a standard fast motherboard/peripheral setup, that I would tune and lock down configs on, and all of the 'chrome' stuff my daughter likes (what's a "shell" Dad!?) would be tweaked out for her and my wife.
Unfortunately, I work on computers all day (configs, programming, troubleshooting, consulting on system admin issues - you name it), and have neither the time nor the energy to do it 'right' at home. So my menagerie of computers of various makes, models, ages and operating systems will have to suffice until that day I win the lottery, find out I have a rich uncle who left me his estate, or sell the great American novel...
Re:makes me think twice... (Score:3, Informative)
I run SuSE 8.2 because it's the only distro I've found that will actually work on my PC - others (Mandrake, RedHat) fail to work with my RAID controller (KR7A-RAID).
SuSE's install and config tools (YAST1/2) are great for newbies like me.
Linux United... (Score:2)
Re:Linus distro flame fest... (Score:2)
Suse's portal server is a killer platform and the first product in a long time to really challenge Exchange in the enterprise.
As for a desktop distro, from my experience in corporate buildouts, Suse and Lindows seem to really shine right now. RedHat is good, too.
We still run NetBSD or a trusted UNIX on our big iron servers, though.
Re:it's disgusting (Score:2, Interesting)
SuSE's strong points (Score:3, Interesting)
Admittedly, this guy is leaning out of the window here. However, the industry -- in this case meaning not computer vendors but IT companies wanting to use computers for administrating/performing their work, is so far used to Windows, and may not always be forgiving when it comes to quirks that geek distros like Debian, Gentoo and Slackware tend to have. While in the hands of a dedicated power user, these may be far superior to SuSE and RedHat, in the hands of even a computer-experienced, intelligent linux-n
Re:Wasn't SuSE (Score:4, Informative)
You also realize that IBM is a partner with UnitedLinux [unitedlinux.com]?
Labeling SuSE as evil because of it's association with UnitedLinux is as wrong as labeling TrollTech as evil because it's association with Canopy Group.
Bullshit. (Re:I don't recommend suse) (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to rain on your parade, but you're into serious bullshitting territory here.
SuSE (~300 employees) has a subtancial amount of fulltime developers programming OSS day-in and day-out. They pretty much did Alsa by themselves, they did something like 90% of United Linux and they are the ones in the market offering the biggest value for the least money. They've translated big parts of the linux documentation into german and offer a solid service that goes beyond just having a cardboard box. A box with the largest paperdocumentation on a linux distro, I might add. Shure SuSE wants to make a buck, but stating that they're only focusing on their benefit and not giving back anything of substance is just plain silly.