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SuSE Businesses

SuSE larger than RedHat 252

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-it-gets-crazy dept.
kris writes "German c't magazine has a story about SUSE (english site: suse.com) reporting a larger turnover that RedHat (26.6 Mio. DM == 15 Mio US$ vs. RedHat with 11 Mio. US$). Suse also reported earnings, while RedHat reported a loss of $130,000 during the same time." kris has translated the article below if you want. Else use babelfish.
Here is a rough translation of the article:

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. "
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SuSE larger than RedHat More

SuSE larger than RedHat

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  • The version of SuSE you buy in USA defaults
    to English.
  • 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
  • :) 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).
  • 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
  • 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!

  • We monitor the Linux distributions used by the people who register the MpegTV Player ( mtv [mpegtv.com]).

    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.

  • Re:both SUSE and RedHat suck. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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**.

  • Duh (Score:1)

    by TBone ( 5692 )
    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.
  • Glad to hear it.

    But I'm still going Debian when 2.2 is stable. :P
  • 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....

  • Re:Pansy. (Score:3)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:41AM (#1834180) Homepage
    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.
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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...
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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?
  • 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!

    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 ... it tells how to install,
    configure & ciao ;-) the suse book tells you a lot
    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 ... (i never found out how
    to tell rpm to forget about dependenies *i*'m
    in controll of :-( rpm sucks ;-)

    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 ... forehead. it's kind of *raw* unix
    without a fancy envelope ... it's fully open
    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 ;-) after all they are just
    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.


  • Slacker. I edit the inodes via magnet.

    (yes, i know i stole if from UF, forgive me)
  • > "Oh yeah, well my distro is supported in my
    > native language, at least!"

    US citizen? oh well ... (sigh)

    FYI: non-US citizens *hate* US letter paper format, not supporting ISDN, transatlantic keyboards and the American way of Life.
  • 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 :[) 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
    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 /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 :).
    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.

    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 :P

    Or it could be the amount of $$$ RH spends on GPL'd r&d.

    Who knows.

  • " 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.

  • I think you have it wrong (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Of course, it comes with phone support. But never mind that, right? You just wanted to rip on Redhat 'cause you hear that's the cool thing to do these days.

    Besides, if you're paying $40 or $20, you're still getting ripped off if you don't need tech support. Cheapbytes loves you.

    ----

  • Ha! Power!

    I am lucky there's an electric storm tonight so I'm able to read ./ Don't ask me how I'm gonna feel in the morning after all those lightnings...

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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%
  • 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.

  • what's wrong with the paper?
  • 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)

  • 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.
  • SUSE, being a German company, would presumably file for an IPO in Frankfurt, rather than New York. The SEC is powerful but I hardly think it's powers extend to regulating non-US stock markets...

    Nick

  • >that's nuthin! I swing from vine to vine from my >house to my isp, toggling switches manually at >either end for eatch bit ...

    Oh man, you're doing it the hard way! get yourself a 10 ft. pole to toggle the switches like I do. That cuts twenty feet off of your trip!

  • 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.
  • I would think Caldera would be a much bigger company than both Redhat and SuSE combined. Noorda's personal wealth alone is over $2 Billion last time I heard.

    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. :-)

  • All I can say is, Ouch.
  • Yes, my SuSE 6.1 is fantastic. Great install (that also installed the 4front sound drivers and saved me a helluva long time), 5 CDs, and they even throw in an old vesion of KOffice (do you know how hard it is to compile KOffice yourself?!?).
    Also much, much, much cheaper than RH ( I got it for $25-ish at Chumbo, well worth it).
  • 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."
  • 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
  • Actually, SuSE is not a knockoff of slackware.

    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.

  • It's the wrong size. The rest of the world has standardised on A4 (and A3, and B5, etc.). This becomes a problem whenever the three elements of computers, bits of paper, and people on opposite sides of the US border, come together.
  • 1) What's wrong with US letter paper?
    2) What doesn't support ISDN? FWIW, ADSL is cheaper and faster anyway.
    3) windows supports foreign keyboards, and Linux supports at least a few types of foreign keyboards

    FYI: not all non-US citizens share your opinions on every subject imaginable. If they all hated the American Way of Life, we wouldn't have so many of them trying to immigrate to the U.S.
  • 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.

  • I got 6.1 at LinuxMall for $45, incl shipping. An Incredible bargain. The manual tho left me hanging at several points (ie. they start you off with the 30 minute install--but don't tell you it's really a check list and you'll need more study for the first install) And I had a pain getting my monitor (14" HP SVGA) configured. RedHat 6 had previously recognized it with no problem.
  • I got SuSE 6.1 at Chumbo.com for $25USD
    I've been completely happy with it, it's install is much nicer the RH5-5.2 install.
    YAST is pretty nice, political issues aside..

    It is primarily a German Language product, but you dont see too much of that when you set it up for English Language.

    I like the SuSE X setup program better than the default provided by RH5

    I'm a bit of Linux newbie, only about 5 installs and never rebuilt a custom kernel yet. I've been using Unix (Sun) for 10 years and NT for about the same. Just so you know where I'm coming from...
  • 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.
  • "German Engineered Linux"
    That pretty much says it all.
  • 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.
  • 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

  • Re:SuSE (Score:1)

    by UuCon ( 4853 )
    i've been using RedHat since 4.2. when 6.0 came out, i just couldn't fork over the $70 like most people. I was kinda getting tired of the fact that RH seemed to be getting like M$, so i tried SuSE.
    I LOVE IT! 6.1 is great: easy to configure, faster, more stable, etc. i like YaST, and SaX is MUCH better than Xconfigurator.

    the day i tried to live, i blew up the outsied world...
    Ryan
  • Yeah, I know what you mean. And even when you do get a reply, 8 times out of ten it's just to say 'Sorry but that isn't included in installation support'.

    However there are a lot of good people on the suse-linux-e@suse.com mailing list who are willing to help. It's getting a bit crowded these days though.

    Damn newbies!!!
    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
  • Ok, in that case, why was that guy bitching at me for suggesting ADSL as an alternative to ISDN?
  • Indeed. At my w*rk, we took our UK printer, brought it over to this side of The Pond, and looked at it in dismay. No 220V-110V switch on the PS, and more importantly, A4 tray. To us, it didn't seem that anything was amiss. Then we saw that the none of the papers actually fit, and checked them for size with the existing A4 paper that was left. *sigh*.
  • SuSE is with phone support too.. atleast here in germany...

    -Yoon
  • Linux supported a finish keyboard before it even "saw" a single us keyboard

    -Yoon

  • Re:SuSE (Score:1)

    by Enahs ( 1606 )
    Tried it out...currently running RH6.

    I found SuSE to be a bit too quirky for my taste, but very well put together

    Then again, I did an FTP install, and YaST for some reason had to query an FTP site every time you wanted to use YaST every time you wanted to do some friggin' little change. Is it this way when you actually shell out cash for the CD? Do you have to insert your CD just to run YaST? Hrm, don't have that problem with RH...yah, I know that if I were man (stupid?) enough, I'd just fire up VI and edit .conf files till my hands go numb. But who has the time?

    Oh yeah, and what's up with not shipping kernel sound modules? :^/
  • DIN A0 covers an area of 1 m^2 with height/width = sqrt(2). If you cut a DIN A0 paper in halves, you get 2 DIN A1 sheets, with an area of 1/2 m^2 each while height/width still = sqrt(2). If you cut a DIN A1 paper in halves, you get 2 DIN A2 sheets etc. - If you're a geek, this should make immediate sense to you.

    Try *that* with US letter.
  • "Besides, it's an INSTALLER. What do you need it for other than to install their distro from their CD's?"

    Because I like to share my CDs with my friends.
    I can do that with my Red Hat CD. Even though SuSE may have slightly more revenue, Red Hat probably has a lot more users.

  • 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!

  • My distro can beat up your distro... (Score:5)

    by emerson ( 419 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @01:15PM (#1834326)

    "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."

  • Re:both SUSE and RedHat suck. (Score:3)

    by Mike Buddha ( 10734 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:05AM (#1834333)
    I re-write the kernel everytime I turn my machine on, changing memory locations manually with static electricity gathered by rubbing a ballon against my head...

  • You really can't compare the twos numbers (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:05AM (#1834334)
    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.

  • SuSE Not Good (Score:4)

    by Aaron M. Renn ( 539 ) <arenn@urbanophile.com> on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:06AM (#1834336) Homepage
    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.

  • All a matter of accounting (Score:4)

    by LLatson ( 24205 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:06AM (#1834339) Homepage
    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.

  • Loss (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:11AM (#1834345)
    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.

  • Wimp! (Score:2)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 )
    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!
  • Since I've already ranted about the problems that I had with SuSE 6.1, I'll just summarize them quickly here to let you know how unhappy I was with it. Some of these I forgot about in my earlier post.

    1) RPMs are not named consistantly with RH RPMs. This seems to cause confusion for updates and dependancies. This is a major problem to me, as I couldn't just use most of the tools in RPM form that I previously downloaded and backed up. I now have to get SRPMs and --rebuild or --recompile. I don't really mind the extra time, but the name change seems gratuitous.

    2) GNOME is not very well supported. Enlightenment was DR0.14 (yes, yes, I know that I could use another window manager, but I'm happy with E. Shouldn't I get a choice, at least?). Get with it, DR0.15 was out for quite a while before SuSE 6.1 shipped. It just seemed to me that the distro was VERY KDE-centric. In fact, when I tried not to install KDE (unselected those packages from the install process), it installed the KDE base anyways. Why? Also, GNOME is installed in /opt instead of the /usr filesystem somewhere (./bin, ./local, ./share, whatever!). This, by itself, is not a bad thing. BUT, there was some binary called "panel" in some /usr filesystem (can't remember just now) that preceded /opt in the stock $PATH that came by default, and was launched by gnome-session instead of the GNOME panel. What was even worse was that it appeared to be a demo of something (some X wrapper; not GTK, but maybe Qt or something... I'd have to look to be sure), and hung my box when I shutdown the window manager (WindowMaker at the time, since E was deficient) because WMaker didn't kill the app. It looked to me to be an coding example with no functionality, as the title bar simply said "Panel Test", and did not close for some reason. When the window manager went away, I think it usurped my box, since I couldn't go to a console or kill the X server with ctrl-alt-backspace. So I had to hard reset my box. Very unpleasant to me, and was all caused by a careless (IMHO) setup issue on SuSE's part.

    3) Configuration of printer and network cards was clumsy at best. In fact, neither worked for me. Printer - should have used the universal print driver (for an Epson color stylus 740, or at least allowed me to install my UPD), since it was GS 5.10. The network configuration wouldn't let me choose a dynamic IP for my PPP dialup. Since both my ISP accounts are set up this way, I couldn't use YaST to configure my PPP dialup.

    4) My monitor wasn't in the (painfully small) Monitors database for X. RH5.2 did have it, and it was great to setup. I had to futz with the GUI X configurator that SuSE developed, which took about two hours, as I didn't have the old configuration anymore; far, far too long for my taste, when RH5.2 allowed me to set up X in about 5 minutes. Granted, this is a small detail, but one reason I switched to SuSE was that it was supposed to be better about the small details.

    5)YaST was not intuitive enough. Neither is linuxconf, but I thought YaST was supposed to be a major selling point for SuSE, and better than linuxconf.

    6) The manual was almost useless to me. I found that I already knew everything that was generic to Linux, and the SuSE-specific stuff didn't go far enough. Or maybe SuSE just wasn't capable of what I would expect. I don't know, since I still am unable to figure some stuff out (like printing setup, dynamic IP setup, etc.).

    So, while RH5.1, RH5.2 and Slackware (the only non-RedHat distro that I've used) weren't perfect, I found them much more palatable than SuSE is. And those are comparably old to me. Things should get better, not worse, when I upgrade to a "better" system.

    Just my $0.02. I think that other, more ranting, post helped me clear my head... This one was only SLIGHTLY inflamatory!!

  • That's a desktop share on a specific web site. Is it a Windows web site? Are they specifically made for Internet explorer?

    Web browser hits mean crap. If it were true, we could say that Linux has a huge market share by the number of browser hits from Linux on slashdot.

  • Re:SuSE Not Good (Score:4)

    by John Fulmer ( 5840 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @10:18AM (#1834375)
    Whoa there Tex! Suse has done some very nice things for the Linux community and are doing even more.

    They are responsibe for adding 3DLabs, Rendition, some trident, Cyrix, and SiS X servers, most of which are now in the current XFree server.

    They are also supporting the development of ALSA, by hiring the primary programmer, Jaroslav Kysela, full time and allowing him to work on ALSA professionally.

    Both of the above are either in the GPL or under the XFree License.

    They may not spend 10% of their earnings in new development, and may not have hired a lot of well known Linux people, but they seem to be a quality company, and many people like the distribution.

    Lighten up...

    jf
  • Bah! Back in the day, we didn't even have access to gears and levers. Oh, we dreamed of 'em aye, but we would've had to smelt our own metal. And then there's the problem of findin' a blacksmith. No, we had to use teams of oxen, pulling vast arrays of rope an' pulley. Aye, it took many a year to raise them oxen, and then ta growe th' flax fer the rope. Before that we a' used mules, but they weren't up to the task and often died during computationally raytracing benchmarks. Aye what a strange werld it is now adays with this strange electricity beings used all abouts us.
  • SuSE is more popular in Europe, where local phone usage is generally metered, making downloading a couple gigs' worth of Linux distro much less appealing to European users than to American users...
    --

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