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IBM Businesses Linux Business SuSE

IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux 321

Posted by CowboyNeal from the big-deals dept.
dave writes "Novell announced that it has finalized a $50 million investment from IBM, and that IBM can now begin shipping SUSE Linux on all IBM server platforms. Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."
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IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux More

IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux

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  • Redhat may count the cost... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:02AM (#8666098) Journal
    ... of catering only to the pay-for market. If IBM can bundle a no-cost distribution, why should they pay even token fees to Redhat to bundle their version of Linux as the IBM-blessed version? It's not as though IBM can't support any linux they care to. Hell, they're just about the only company that could support them *all* [grin]

    Or, perhaps it's payback time. Novell were very supportive of IBM in the SCO debacle. Perhaps this is IBM saying thankyou. Wouldn't it be ironic if SCO's actions were what caused Linux to become an even stronger corporate presence :-)

    Simon

    • Re:Redhat may count the cost... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If IBM can bundle a no-cost distribution, why should they pay even token fees to Redhat to bundle their version of Linux as the IBM-blessed version?

      Nice reasoning, but SuSE isn't a no-cost distribution.
      • It is now (look for old news about open-sourcing yast)
        • By that logic, Red Hat is no cost to since its own tools are opensource. SuSE in more no cost that Red Hat. Sure IBM could take all the parts and ship them for free, but they could call it SuSE(or Red Hat), and they would have to support it themselves.
      • I've got a few RedHat Enterprise linux servers and I wish we could get a satellite setup for the RedHat network updates. It's feasible but I understand that RedHat wants big $$. From what I understand, it seems SUSE may be a little nicer since you can probably set up your own YAST server, but seeing as I never have installed SUSE (RedHat at work, Debian at home, next on list is either SUSE or Gentoo. No advocacy meant here, just my current interest levels) I wouldn't know. Redhat's network updates and o
    • I guess this means the rumored Blue Linux isn't going to happen after all?
      • No Blue Linux. Early internal desktop adaptors are on Fedora but the corporate wide roll out on the desktop with all the enterprise tools (expenses, email, time reporting, etc.) will be running native using SuSE Linux.

    • Re:Redhat may count the cost... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EvilAlien ( 133134 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:45AM (#8666316) Journal
      This shouldn't surprise anyone.

      The writing has been on the wall for sometime. Even though local IBM reps have been non-committal about which Linux distribution they would recommend for hardware compatibility, support, etc, it has been pretty clear that a switch to SuSE was coming and that the Novell/IBM alliance would be strengthened. Now it has happened, and the businesses who use Linux and IBM gear have a better idea of how to plan their Linux deployments.

      Red Hat shot their own foot off with the shift in business model. Its not the fees associated with the RH Enterprise stuff as much as it is the brick wall put up in April. Red Hat 9 -> Fedora is not a feasiable option for mission critical business applications, and if a box has to be rebuilt anyways (to use RH Enterprise or something else) then full consideration to that "something else" ought to be made.

      I, for one, welcome the coming of our new green chameleon overlords.

      • Whoo-Hoo!!! This is a huge break for me. When I decided to install a Linux Distro I went with SuSe over RedHat. I like SuSe a lot, but when you go to a bookstore the shelves are lined with nothing but RedHat this and RedHat that.

        This most certainly guarantees there will be a lot more material geared towards SuSe's style of setup.

      • Red Hat shot their own foot off with the shift in business model.

        Exactly, and not only from the 'mission-critical' large-business perspective. From a small-user perspective, I would have paid $40 for a RH desktop distro and never touched the support. I will *not* pay $200 to replace WinXP on a desktop, though. The crux is that I'm moving to Fedora, but RedHat doesn't get my $40 that they otherwise would have.
      • This shouldn't surprise anyone

        I wonder how the guys currently on the IBM & HP sponsored Redhat World Tour [redhat.com] will field this one... Anyone going to one of the remaining shows?

        Was at the Brisbane show and the IBM guy sidestepped the 'So why can't I walk into a store and buy a IBM laptop with RedHat pre-installed' question pretty well. Basically stated something along the lines of - it was something they were watching but they weren't ready to provide support for mom and pop just yet, but that you could
      • Red Hat 9 -> Fedora is not a feasiable option for mission critical business applications

        For anyone who was running RH 9, Fedora Core 1 is a perfectly feasible option, since FC1 is basically RH 9.1 under new management, with the annoying bugs fixed, and with several new update methods, which can do everything up2date did and more.

        I've already migrated a number of RH8/RH9 servers to FC1, noting improved performance and no downside whatever. Suse is certainly a solid choice, but don't act like FC1 is not
        • For people who used RedHat because in the end it did still have a support option but was cheap/free if you didn't end up needing that support, FC1 is a non-option. In other words, they often still need the reassuring thought that they -could- buy support if it got down to it.

        • The Big Slashdot Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)

          by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:59AM (#8668534) Homepage Journal
          Slashdotters need to start understanding that "It works for me," is not an argument. The typical Slashdotter has a level of hacking skill that is neither available nor desired by the world at large.

          It gets old. You talk about email clients, and someone will insist that you can get by with a plain text mailer -- MIME attachments are passing fad. You talk about off-the-shelf routers, and somebody will wonder why you don't just use an old laptop running BSD. You discuss the problems of providing reliable downloads, and someone will insist that BitTorrent, a tool you need to be a total hacker to use, is a universal solution.

          And of course there's the dude who asks, "I have no trouble working with Fedora, why is it a problem for IBM?" Of course it doesn't even occur to him that Red Hat gets the same amount of revenue for Fedora as they get for SuSE. Which is to say, none.

          Repeat after me: "OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS FROM ME."

          • Slashdotters need to start understanding that "It works for me," is not an argument. The typical Slashdotter has a level of hacking skill that is neither available nor desired by the world at large.

            I have to agree with this. I wouldn't say that I am a Linux/Unix guru by any means. I'm running gentoo right now and it isn't that hard for me to use, not to mention that I think it's fun spending entire nights reading up on a new piece of software I want to use. But I have a friend that is interested in runni

      • Version Creep, Platforms and Support (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @10:25AM (#8667315)

        The biggest problem I've had over the past few months with Redhat is this:

        Heaps of apps targeted and marketed towards the Redhat "platform".

        Redhat has dropped support for old products... this means no security updates, which upsets corporate IT departments and PHBs. They all say "thou shall upgrade to a supported version"

        However, the RH 8 platform is only two years old and unsupported.

        Now if your apps are "supported only under Redhat 8", but your servers "must upgrade to a supported version", short of tedious technical assessments, Redhat has effectively killed the products you're using.

        PHB's say "I knew we shouldn't have trusted this Linux crap! Now our apps are unsupported!"

        Now... does the application developer target RH AS? Which has already crept to 2.1, or do they consider SuSE, Debian, or ditch Linux altogether?

        I'm certain IBM has encountered this problem. There are apps on the IBM website which used to show Linux support for Redhat 8 and under, but now that RH8 is unsupported, the apps show no support for Linux at all.

        IBM, a company which still provides support for OS/2, and will probably service your ball typewriter if you paid them enough, has to tell its customers "our supplier has dropped support."

        Will IBM stick with Redhat?

        Something is going to blow very, very soon. Redhat would be wise to offer support for prior versions... and NOW, and drop the BS version creep.

        Their stellar stock performance over the past few months has come at the price of customer loyalty.

        • For a few years now SuSE Linux has only supported their Personal and Professional level products for around 2 years. It wasn't actually two years initially but they would provide support for the last 4 releases of SuSE Linux. Since they did releases about every 6 months it worked out to be about 2 years worth of support for a given version. If you want longer term support you need to go with an Enterprise version of SuSE or Red Hat as that provides something like 5 years of support.

    • Red Hat is Dying (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:16AM (#8666515)
      It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: Red Hat is dying. Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Red Hat community when recently IDC confirmed that Red Hat accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Red Hat has lost more market share, news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Red Hat is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

      You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Red Hat's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Red Hat faces a bleak future.

      In fact there won't be any future at all for RH because Red Hat is dying. Things are looking very bad for Red Hat. As many of us are already aware,
      RH continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

      Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:21AM (#8666549)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • EDU perspective (Score:4, Informative)

      by SuperQ ( 431 ) * on Thursday March 25, 2004 @10:49AM (#8667600) Homepage
      We wanted to license SuSE for a 16 processor machine. A commercial license for SuSE was $4000 (4x 4proc $1000 license), EDU license was much cheaper, $400. It took 2 weeks to PO a SuSE vendor who supported EDU pricing.

      After installing the system with SuSE and running their update utility, the new kernel installed by the utility doesn't boot, even after contacting SuSE enterprise support, they had no answer, except to boot the old vulnerable kernel.

      RedHat EL was $50, and we downloaded ISO's the same day we paid.

      We arn't running SuSE anymore.

  • Bad times for Red Hat! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LoboRojo ( 758260 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:03AM (#8666102)
    First they lost appreciation from personal users (Fedora affair), and now they lose support from big guys (IBM). I'd sell my Red Hat stock as soon as I could pick up the phone and contact my broker...
    • sorry I sold mine last april when they told almost all of us to sod-off..

      Us uers are who MADE redhat. They made the intentional decision to piss us off and to make us look bad to our bosses and company's executive branch. redhat has a bad taste in the mouth of most linux professionals that were buying the stock and support for the machines... we were riding on the freedoms that Open Source and linux gave us... the fact that we can add servers for little to no cost except for adding to the support agreeme
    • I dunno, look at any major shared or dedicated hosting company that uses Linux. What are they running? Discount and shared servers run RedHat 9 (and now I'm starting to see Fedora), and professional and dedicated run RHEL 3. Once in awhile I see Debian, but it's a RedHat world in the Linux hosting market. That's a lot of customers. As far as I've observed, SuSE hosting is a rarity.
    • Is it just me, or would The Fedora Affair be a great title for a cold war spy novel?

  • In other news.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by garver ( 30881 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:06AM (#8666122)

    HP and Novell are putting SUSE on it's desktops and laptops [informationweek.com].

  • A Red Hat shop? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:06AM (#8666123) Homepage
    > Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,'

    This would explain why we have been running SuSE on our mainframes for the last two years then.

    IBM has had marketing agreements with Red Hat, SuSE and and TurboLinux for quite some time. It may favour Red Hat in the States, but it seems quite agnostic about which distribution to recommend to customers.

    • I seem to recall several years ago that IBM invested US$10M in SuSE, too, when it was in more of a financial struggle.

      I've always liked the SuSE distribution compared with Red Hat for their 7 CD's worth of lesser known applications. Early versions did have a tendency to default applications to use A4 papersizes, though.

    • Re:A Red Hat shop? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by turgid ( 580780 )
      This would explain why we have been running SuSE on our mainframes for the last two years then.

      Does it (Linux) run under a hypervisor, or on the bare metal?

      • Re:A Red Hat shop? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:23AM (#8666579) Homepage
        > Does it (Linux) run under a hypervisor, or on the bare metal?

        You can run it on the bare metal, but you lose a lot by doing so. Much better to run it under VM, when you can have a large number of instances running simultaneously. You can generate a new instance in about 90s.

        For those who don't know VM, this corresponds to installing a new version of Linux.

  • IBM not a Red Hat shop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kinkie ( 15482 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:08AM (#8666132) Homepage
    I've had a few dealings with IBM regarding Linux in the past few years, and they've historically been pretty agnostic distribution-wise, with some slant towards SuSE on the mainframe, and Red Hat on the x86 platform (but I've heard friends of mine say that IBM pushed SuSE very aggressively on the x86 platform too).
    Remember that the first industrial-strenght implementation of a Linux system on the mainframe has been a joint effor by SySE and IBM.
    • Remember that the first industrial-strenght implementation of a Linux system on the mainframe has been a joint effor by SySE and IBM.

      The s390 source tree in the linux kernel was developed at the IBM Research Lab at Boeblingen (Germany) around 1999.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:10AM (#8666145)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • On a different note, does the slew of press releases over the past month concerning large-scale corporate marketing of Linux demonstrate that the big players don't take SCO/Caldera seriously any more as a threat?

      Um, you mean the slew of press releases from IBM, Novell and SuSE? Caldera/SCO was in bed with each of them before going psycho; I don't think they took SCO's threats seriously to begin with, hence all the kicking and screaming from SCO.

      By the way, were are the doggone SuSE ISO bittorrents? Isn't

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:10AM (#8666147)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mike77 ( 519751 ) <mraley77NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:38AM (#8666713)
      However, sources reveal that IBM itself is very interested in this "Linux" thing, and simply gave a finger to Microsoft.

      No, No, NO!
      How many times must I say this to people
      It's not a finger, it's the finger!

      --This message brought to you by the society for the encouragement of correctly used insults, gestures, and otherwiuse rude behaviour.

  • IBM and SUSE go waaay back (Score:4, Informative)

    by los furtive ( 232491 ) <ChrisLamothe&gmail,com> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:11AM (#8666153) Homepage
    This isn't the first time [slashdot.org] IBM gives SUSE a hand.

  • IBM *not* a "Red Hat shop" (Score:4, Informative)

    by mrhartwig ( 61215 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:14AM (#8666173)
    IBM has been far from a "Red Hat shop" in the past. SuSE has had -- until the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 -- better mainframe support, and SuSE's Enterprise distros for the Power architecture (pSeries & iSeries) has also been better.

    You've been able to get SuSE Enterprise for Power with your pSeries box for a while now (sorry, no time to look up specifics, and this is /. anyway; why clutter a good post up with verifiable facts). IBM has also had a relationship with Red Hat (Hardware Management Consoles for the partitionable pSeries boxes use a customized RH distro), so it's not like they've been *only* SuSE.

    Remember, at one time, in the not-to-distant past, IBM was a "partner" with 4 different Linux distributors: Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and (gasp) Caldera. So, you might as well say IBM's been a "SCO shop" for a while, too.....
  • We might really see a change in authority here, this article [sltrib.com] from the Salt Lake Tribune mentions that "benefited substantially from IBM's long-running relationship with SuSE." IBM has been in the race for a while, but it looks like all the big boys are now coming out to play. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

  • IBM has always been tight with Suse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by puppetluva ( 46903 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:16AM (#8666188)
    This post is misleading. IBM has always been close to Suse (probably closer than with Redhat):
    • IBM was one of the main investors in Suse from the beginning.
    • They shipped Suse for their Zseries (mainframe) boxes as the only option.
    • Many of the suse executives were ex-IBMers
    • I think that Suse was the distro they pitched in Munich (although I'm not as sure about this one)

    So. . . this should surprise no-one. IBM is omnipresent in Linux these days, but they have traditionally been the biggest force behind Suse (and now they are backing Novell).

    My Guess As to Why? There are things that IBM can do hiding behind the names "Suse" and "Novell" that they cannot do as "IBM".

  • IBM a Red Hat Shop ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by richg74 ( 650636 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:16AM (#8666190) Homepage
    Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."

    I don't think that one can describe IBM as purely a "Red Hat shop"; they've had offerings with SuSE in the past. But I'd say their primary motivation is probably just to keep their options open w/r/t OS suppliers. (And, of course, I'm sure it doesn't hurt that Novell is sticking it to SCO, and is a plausible annoyance to Microsoft.)

    I mean, look how well things turned out for them the last time they had a single supplier.

  • Changing to SuSE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Isldeur ( 125133 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:16AM (#8666192)

    I think this is a great move. I moved to SuSE before for a while before I went to gentoo (simply because it's easier to update) and the SuSE people just do things well. It's like those German cars. When I first sat in a BMW and saw that the rear-view mirrors adjusted automatically when reversing or the window-wipers altered the length of their pause depending on your speed I thought "Nice job guys. Well done."

    I get the same feeling when using SuSE - nice things you never even thought of.

  • Message *SENT* (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't $50 million the same amount as the PIPE deal Microsoft dumped into SCO?

    Anyone think this wasn't a message to Bill Gates?

  • IBM is a company (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 222 ( 551054 ) <stormseeker@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:20AM (#8666205) Homepage
    IBM is a company, and a company sells what its customers want. If 6% of IBM's customer base wanted to use dr-dos, im sure IBM would find a means to deliver it. Thats all, theres nothing more to see here.
    Suse, for those that havent used it, is a fantastic distro btw... it was the first one to convince me to buy a boxed copy ;). Both home and personal versions on 8.2 and 9.

    Also, suse sells 3 foot inflatible penguins on their website, i paid 25 bucks for mine, and TRUST ME... it impresses the ladies.

    • Re:IBM is a company (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Been there, done that and believe me, asking a woman if she wanted to come to your place to see your 3 foot inflatible penguin will _not_ get you laid.
    • > IBM is a company, and a company sells what its customers want.

      Heh, I'm sure all those who bought MCA machines from them back when those still existed really agree with that ;P (and yeah, MCA had some real advantages, just lacked compatability and 3rd party hardware)
    • Do the penguins have realistic orifices?

  • War by Proxy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HighOrbit ( 631451 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:22AM (#8666212)
    -- Caldera started by disgruntled Novell employees
    --MS finances Caldera/SCO to sue IBM
    --IBM induces Novell to register UNIX copyrights (after waiting 10 years to get around to it).
    --Novell Buys SuSe
    --SCO sues Novell
    --Now IBM pours money into Novell

    I know Novell is a company with a glorious past, but, just as SCO is a MS puppet/proxy, I think Novell is getting pulled into being a minor sattelite orbiting IBM.

    Man, this is better than a soap opera !

  • Probably been said, but (Score:5, Informative)

    by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:26AM (#8666228) Homepage Journal
    Harbinger of things to come is the latest phrase from the department of redundancy department.

    A harbinger describes things to come, so this phrase is equal to "A fortelling of things to come of things to come". Not only that, but Merriam-Webster (my online dictionary of choice, since dictionary.com implemented annoying popups and banners that give people siezures) lists 2b (n. one that foreshadows what is to come) as a precursor to the modern definition (one that pioneers or initiates a major change). Not that "an initiator of major change to come" makes much more sense, as "initiator of major change" already implies something is to come.

    ~Will
    • A harbinger describes things to come, so this phrase is equal to "A fortelling of things to come of things to come".

      Doesn't "foretell" also mean "to describe things to come"? So this phrase is equal to "Talking about things to come of things to come of things to come". Not that it really matters. This is Slashdot, and "harbinger of things to come" is poetry compared to ninety percent of the stuff here.

  • Props to Novell (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:27AM (#8666237) Journal
    They've really turned around the compnay in a really short amount of time. I mean Netware as a product was sort of dying out and they sold most of Unix (or the brooklyn bridge, its hard to tell). I thought they would just fade off into the sunset, or linger like a rotting corpse as a shell of its former glorious self( See Borland). Those executives should get a nobel prize in business. Wait, they don't give a nobel prize for buisness. I guess their huge salaries and bonuses will have to be enough. But, seriously they did a really good job.
  • Will this really impact anything except perhaps some stock prices? Red Hat have made a pretty risky move by only taking paying customers for their distro (although i appreciate that they have Fedora, it's a shame they basically split their business in two). Maybe you could say they bought the loss on themselves. But putting all the corporate deals and insentives behind, is this really going to affect the adoption of linux in the business and home user world?

  • The turning point... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:28AM (#8666241)
    This is the moment I have been waiting for.

    Since the late 90's people have been saying "Linux will be ready for the desktop in a few years". I realised the epoch defining moment would be when the major PC manufacturers started ship Linux on the desktop in a big way.

    Folks. This is it. The real battle has just begun.

  • The harbinger... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... of things to come is the great beauty of Linux. You don't have to be tied to "one shop" as this whole industry is so used to doing. You have choice, so you have the potential for competition. IBM is simply being a good consumer. They learned their lessons from the past (when they were dependent upon Microsoft). Makes perfect buiness sense.

    Linux will be a business where lots of people get to eat, but no one will get filthy rich -- and that isn't a bad thing.

  • Has to be said (Score:5, Interesting)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) * <onyxruby@ c o m c a s t . net> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:35AM (#8666273)
    Has to be said, how long until IBM buys out Novell? They haven't exactly done too well these last few years, and Novell has a whole host of patents and IP that would fit in niceley with IBM. Not only that, but if this farce with SCO doesn't get dismissed soon, they would then be the direct owners of those Unix remnants that Novell holds onto.

    Novell is moving more and more into Linux, and there next version of Netware is to be Linux based, with no more stand alone netware products they just announced. Novell was once king, as was IBM in it's heydey. Between them they could well become king again.

  • What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by robkore ( 251928 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:45AM (#8666315)
    Let me start by saying that this is not a troll, just an honest question.

    Could someone please explain why one would drop all that money on an iSeries or zSeries just to run linux on it, rather than saving money by getting an x86 machine? If I'm buying an iSeries, it's because I want to run OS/400. Don't get me wrong, I think it's rather cool that it's even possible, but is it really necessary?

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BCW2 ( 168187 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:57AM (#8666375) Journal
      Reliability. They are also faster than x86, especially in read/write to the HDD. Stripped arrays are fast.

    • Corporate customers love that warm feeling of having someone's ass at the other end of a FIXME button detonated.

      Although you'd think that IBM would be more of a Red Hat supporter (would they really want support two distributions?), I think this investment probably started after the SCO fiasco launched and Novell and IBM were forced by need, to cooperate together. Novell is throwing in with Linux like IBM did a few years ago and it doesn't take make much sense to restrict the number of people working on L

  • Sitting on two chairs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sofist ( 556213 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @08:54AM (#8666362)
    If you look into the past you can predict future. IBM is not stupid. They do not want to create another Microsoft. They are going to play on two horses, one being RedHat and the other SuSe/Novell. This makes room for IBM to make A LOT of money by selling hardware. Do not worry in five years, there will still be RedHat and SuSe - both having around 30% of the market. IBM will make it so.

  • ppc (Score:4, Informative)

    by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@@@gmail...com> on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:00AM (#8666405) Homepage Journal

    Interestingly, from SuSe's FAQ [suse.com]:

    Will there be a PPC edition of SUSE Linux 9.0?

    Answer: no.

    Although Suse once had a PPC port, it is clearly stagnant; this investment from IBM very likely means that it'll be revived, but that'll take a least some doing. Yellow Dog Linux [yellowdoglinux.com] remains the best choice to run Linux on your Mac, apparently, even the one with an IBM processor.

    • Re:ppc (Score:3, Informative)

      by ananke ( 8417 )
      Uhmm, SuSE Enterprise runs nicely on IBM's ppc 64bit. In fact, that's what IBM ships those babies with.

  • Server shmerver, when do I get to buy it on a Thinkpad?

    The same thing happened with OS/2. Great OS, but the company would make you yank your own teeth out with rusty pliers before the would send it to you. Instead they would shove their own competition down your throte (that' "other" OS).

  • Novell has decided to use KDE (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:10AM (#8666473)
    NOVELL has decided to go with KDE as desktop rather than GNOME.

    Read more here [heise.de]. This is a direct quote from Novells Chris Stone.

  • CeBIT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kruczkowski ( 160872 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:12AM (#8666482) Homepage
    Yesterday I went to CeBIT and the SuSE booth was in hall 1 right under Novell. (They pay extra to be in hall 1) Red Hat was stuck in the back of a hall and almost didn't notice them, they were just behind Iran's massive booth (Countries have booths to get people to invest in them)

    Also Check out this image from a fourune cookie that SuSE was passing out:
    http://www.kruczkowski.com/images/cebit04/in sects. JPG

  • Slightly OT: SCO's reaction? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Platinum Dragon ( 34829 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:12AM (#8666484) Journal
    SCO will get big mileage out of this in the public arena, claiming that Novell and IBM are conspiring to block its legal claims. SCO will also try a new legal attack against both companies, claiming they are conspiring against it to defuse SCO's legal arguments while economically benefitting from what SCO views as their contract- and IP-infringing activities.

    Thoughts?
  • Just if IBM releases Lotus Office as Open Source, M$ will fall deep.

  • One has to wonder? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:26AM (#8666608)
    ...one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come.

    No need to inject false drama here. Things have come. No wondering required. Next story please.

  • Redhat vs. IBM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by qweqazfoo ( 765286 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @09:30AM (#8666643)
    I used to work with the Linux Tech Center at IBM, and I've still got friends on the inside. From what they tell me, SuSE is just much more cooperative and much more interested in partnership than Redhat.

    You may have heard Redhat called the Microsoft of Linux. This is a perception that is alive and well within IBM.

    When I worked on the Linux Standards Base project, Redhat was very resistant to standardization. We'd open bug reports about LSB compliance issues, and they'd be hastily closed saying that Redhat wanted to do things their way. They ended up not participating in the UnitedLinux project, which was backed heavily by IBM and HP.

    SuSE on the other hand was very involved with the LSB and UnitedLinux. They drove a bulk of the standardization efforts. They also have a very good support relationship with the IBM Linux developers.

    So when it comes down to it, SuSE just wants IBM more than RH. They created a better working relationship. The only thing they really lacked was a strong North American presence. The merger with Novell solved that, and gave them a strong support and services arm to boot.

  • I have to just scratch my head (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @11:50AM (#8668372) Journal
    I've always hated the fickle part of the Linux community. The kind that always rooted for Red Hat to Fall even though they've given away the code to everything they've ever produced. Even back in the mid 90's you had these jackass's calling Red Hat the "Microsoft" of Linux soley because they were the most popular.

    Now along comes Novell/Suse. Suse of course has specialized in proprietary restrictive distros. Only just recently has Yast been gpl'd. Novell of course has specialized in proprietary software for like 20 years. These are the company's that you want to lead Linux and OSS for the next 10 years? Let me tell you. Novell may finally allow ISO's of some low end form of Suse to be released but their main goal is combining their proprietary technologies with Suse. So now you'll see a Suse with a GPL Yast but proprietary NDS,Groupwise, Zenworks, Ximian connector etc. Novell btw also doesn't have the best track record for acquisitions and business management for the last 10 years. In fact they have a downright shitty track record. This is the mega-company that you want to "lead" linux for the next 10 years?

    Good luck. Oh and Redhate sucks.

  • Historically. (Score:3, Informative)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Thursday March 25, 2004 @12:34PM (#8669096) Homepage
    historically IBM has always been a Red Hat shop

    Nonsense. IBM has always, when they've shipped Linux, shipped RedHat on some platforms (mostly x86-based, started to move to POWER) and SUSE on others (S/390 and zSeries, maybe some x86. SUSE used to have a PPC distro too).

    I can imagine that one reason for this policy is that IBM learned with Microsoft the danger of handing an OS business to just one company.

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