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SuSE Businesses

Intel Invests 12 Million Euro in SuSE 107

Posted by Hemos from the getting-the-cash dept.
Bartmoss writes "Intel and the venture capital firm Apax are investing 12 million Euro in SuSE. Read the press release online. Looks like they want to open up new offices in parts of Europe, start moving into the Asian markets, and do the fashionable IPO thing. "
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Intel Invests 12 Million Euro in SuSE More

Intel Invests 12 Million Euro in SuSE

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  • For those that don't know, 1 Euro is pretty close in price to one US dollar.
  • Alright, I love to hear about my favorite distro especially to hear that it is growing.
    More good new: 6.3 will be out in stores December first. :^)
  • Although I suppose I'd have been more accurate if I'd said that it was close in value to the dollar, rather than price... ;)
  • $12,231,599.81 to be exact.

  • It is good to hear that Intel is involved. (Score:3)

    by ]Ace[ ( 116454 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:02AM (#1506129) Homepage
    One must remember that a big element in Red Hat's rise into repectability and brand poweress was Intel's initial investment in Red Hat. As a result of Intel's involvement, SuSE could become an European version of the American Linux powerhouse in its own industry. I see this as extremely good news for both SuSE and the linux companies at large. Any investment by Intel (i.e. Apple in the very beginning when Jobs was in his garage...) signifies instant respectability and credibility...

    Please visit FreeDonation.com [freedonation.com] - You can donate Food and Medicine for FREE to Save Children (You can donate once EVERY DAY). The donation is fully paid by corporate sponsors with the money they would have spent anyway on advertising. There is no charge to you.

  • interesting (Score:3)

    by dothead ( 112164 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:03AM (#1506130)
    hmmm, the EU is looking into a ban of the PIII and Intel starts investing in European companies. I guess things work the same way the world over.
  • After Intel's massive investment in Red Hat, it was suspected that the Wintel alliance was getting shaky. But $12 million+ for SuSE is nothing to sneeze at, either!

    If SuSE and Red Hat can get together and do strategic spending (no need for them to duplicate each other's staff & skill lists), then we could see some staggering strides towards the desktop.

    On the other hand, if SuSE and Red Hat prefer bloody battle between each other, we could end up seeing a vicious fight indeed, with these kinds of resources available.

    I guess we shall see.

  • SuSE v Red Hat (Score:3)

    by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:09AM (#1506132)
    This had to happen. SuSE and Red Hat are almost exactly the same size (SuSE makes a profit, Red Hat a small loss) and Red Hat are expanding into SuSE's 'patch' - even recruiting Alan Cox along the way.
    Now SuSE are trying to expand in the same way - this money is to expand their marketing.
    They still have to take the step of 'going public' (an IPO) - this is not a good time to go that way in Germany.

  • Re:The Value of the Euro.. (Score:3)

    by xtype ( 41544 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:11AM (#1506133) Homepage
    Although, I suppose I would have been more accurate if I would have sated the exchange rate.

    12,000,000 * 1.019300 = 12,231,599.81

  • DON'T FORGET THE 'TEL'in 'WINTEL' (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:18AM (#1506134)

    Hey guys don't forget that Intel has a vested
    interest in the wintel hegemony.

    They may be giving Redhat, VA research and Suse money. but do you really want to replace windows
    with Pentium?

    Look at VA linux they have stopped selling or
    developing for any system but INTEL.

    NO Alpha,
    NO PPC,
    NO AMD,

    NO Nothing, except INTEL from VA Research.

    They even have started spouting INTEL FUD about
    how merced will take over the world.

    When these linux companies get bought by big
    companies with vested interests they will begin
    to change.

    We just don't want software choice we also
    want hardware choice. don't forget that.

    So VA Research, and all those companies that are
    making it rich on linux. remember where it all
    came from. And support linux on all hardware possible.

  • Typical Intel (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those of you who don't know, Intel likes sprinkling their money everywhere. They will invest in anything that even remotely takes advantage of their goals or bottom line. I work at a wintel software house developing digital video and graphics products and intel bought 20% stake just so we would push the envelope for SSE and their higher end chips. We also get all their new high end chips many months before they reach the market.. :)

    I was surprised when talking to friends in competing companies that intel had done the same with them. It seems they like to get their hands in everything.
  • Timing is everything... and oh look, RedHat's stock closed up today +24 3/32 to 167 27/32! Damn I guess the world is realizing it is the end of the M$ era.

    Excellant. Competition between Linux vendors. Just makes that product ROCK that much more.

  • SuSE and RedHat (Score:3)

    by Bartmoss ( 16109 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:28AM (#1506137) Homepage Journal
    Well I see some major differences between the way RH and SuSE conduct business. RH seem to be a "Linux freak" community moving into the business area; SuSE seems the more mature but "less cool" approach. RH makes minimal losses, SuSE is profitanle. I don't think they're going to slug it out now, as some users suggest - there's a huge market out there, and it's virtually divided by RedHat, SuSE and maybe Debian. They're not invading each other's turf, either - if one company hires, say Alan Cox to work on Linux, it benefits the competition just as much.

    The battle's going to be over who converts the most new users to Linux. That's where most packages are sold, I'd wager, and also over market share in the business support area. That's where the money lies with Linux.

    I'd also like to point out that SuSE is a general distributor of (Linux) software and even hardware.. For example, I bought Civ:CTP from them.

    I'd say RH is firmly entrenched in the US, while SuSE holds much of the EU. SuSE is now doing the sensible thing - instead of trying to compete overly much with RH, they're grabbing market shares in other, more "linux virgin" markets.

    We'll see what happens... I'd also like to see how well SuSE stock performs at an IPO - Certainly not as spectacular as redhat, but I'd predict growth nonetheless... Afterall SuSE does make profits in addition to beingon the top of the Linux wave .. ;)
  • How could you possibly like a distro that changes *ALL* of the normal dependencies????

    Okay so it's great if you want a no frills out of the box version of linux with no up to date packages and nothing to compile non packaged code with, but otherwise it's USELESS!!!

    We have used it at work for near on 2 years now, and it's finally got to breaking point. It just doesn't work if you want to do anything non-standard with it.

    Even when you compile -nodeps it still barfs because nothing follows a logical path.

    *yuck*

    Debian rules, FreeBSD is cool... SuSE, no thanks.

  • Good And Bad (Score:4)

    by z84976 ( 64186 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:32AM (#1506139) Homepage
    This is good because it will help a lot of R&D happen a lot faster than it otherwise would have, but at what cost?

    I use SuSE pretty much exclusively, and I love it. When the Athlon first came out, the SuSE boot disk wouldn't work with it. SuSE very quickly posted an Athlon-compatible boot disk on their web site. Do you think Intel's investment will prod SuSE to ignore AMD? I think Intel makes fine products, but if these investments are just their way of discouraging software support for their competitors' products... well, they will have to be stopped. They've proven beyond any doubt this year that they no longer hold their #1 Chip Company position by superior products; strongarm tactics and (semi-)empty threats are their new modus operandi. I'm buying an Athlon soon because I want the best for my next x86 PC, and if SuSE backs down on support for it I'll be cancelling my subscription and going back to Slackware...

  • I'm not so sure (Score:4)

    by DanaL ( 66515 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:38AM (#1506141)
    It seems to me that Intel investing in other OSes is almost old hat. Not only did then send money RedHat's way, the sent Intel engineers over to Be Inc. in order to help them with the port of BeOS to x86 platform.

    Mind you, that was also before Linux was generally considered a serious threat to Windows.

    Dana

  • Re:This could spell doom for the Wintel alliance (Score:3)

    by Rexifer ( 81021 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @11:41AM (#1506143)
    Intel's been investing in alternative OSes for a while. Be is another good example. You'll also note that Be started supporting the ia-32 architecture more than the PPC around that time.

    But more importantly, it's pretty obvious that Intel is looking out for themselves... Why have all of your eggs in Microsoft's basket? ;)

  • Re:DON'T FORGET THE 'TEL'in 'WINTEL' (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux is an x86 project. All the ports are basically niche projects.

    If you want a multi-architecture OS, go with NetBSD.
  • Maybe Debian works; I hated its installation setup so much that I've never tried it again (2.0). Of course, I could make the same comment you made about Redhat. Its getting so that the question of what is standard is going the same way as the commercial unix world. At the moment, I still like Suse.

  • SuSE IPO ? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The name of the company on the press release is SuSE Linux AG !
    AG = Aktien Gesellschaft and Aktie = Stock
    However I can't find them listed on the German stock exchanges. Is it possible to be an AG but not being publicly traded ?
    The website still refers to the company as SuSE GmbH (corporation with limited liability).
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Intel is investing in every alternitive to Microsoft out there... Be, the Linux distros... Obviously they're attempting to spread their installed user base around multiple OSes. After all, their livelyhood kind of depends on Microsoft, which puts them in an awkardly dependant position. The name "Wintel" probably causes them cringe, I'd bet.

    But, my question is, are they doing more harm than good? They want the intel seed sewn pretty much everywhere there's installed desktop, regardless of OS. But, if the average consumer is faced with a dozen Linux variants and a handful of other alternative operating system... They're going to run to what they know. And that puts us back into obscurity.

    Betting on everyone never really wins big.

  • We (my emails: mha@suse.de and mhasenst@us.oracle.com [I'm at Oracle in Redwood City, for SuSE]) will NOT forget other platforms. We've had an AXP version of the distribution, and we might have other platforms as well. We can't do Compaqs work, however. If they don't promote the Alpha (enough)... same with PPC -- (offtopic) FYI: Oracle on SuSE (my business): - SuSE Linux 6.2 certified on Oracle 8i, and SuSE Linux 6.3 is 98% through the process) - SuSE _first_ distributor with en engineer (me) at Oracle HQ - also see http://www.suse.de/~mha/oracle/
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
  • Last I checked Intel isn't the only game in town for x86 processors.... I see that Athlon based systems are suspiciously absent from VA Linux systems...
  • It makes good business sense for Intel to have as many operating systems as possible supporting its chips. I see this as a good thing for the Linux community at large. I wouldn't think of it as a bloody battle so much as stiff competition... which leads to innovation. That's the way the market is supposed to work (unless you're based in Redmond, Washington).
  • Just a friendly reminder that pressing the Preview button before submiting can save even you from unsightly and embarrasing typos in the friggin' subject...

    My bad. :)

  • >>s it possible to be an AG but not being publicly traded ?

    Yes. You can be an AG and have only one of shareholder.

  • Re:SuSE IPO ? (Score:3)

    by mha ( 1305 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @12:01PM (#1506155) Homepage
    SuSE AG is a holding. It contains several sub-companies (as "GmbH"s), one of the SuSE Press, another one is SuSE Inc. (SuSE Oakland, California), and so on. Shares of a company that is based on stock don't have to be traded publically. You can found your own "AG" and own 100% of the stock. Only some "AG"s are traded publically. Should be the same in the US.
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]

  • Your point is that Intel wants to sell more Intel chips, right? Duh!

    The don't really care if Windows or anything else runs on it.

    They fact is that Linux on Intel runs very well, thankyou very much!

    Sure, AMD is making big improvements, but they don't have a great choice in motherboards yet, and they aren't that much cheaper than Intel at the same performace level - and Intel can do better multiprocessing (because of the motherboard situation) at the moment.

    Maybe one day that IBM PowerPC standard will make an impact, but until then for Price/Performance Intel kicks butt.

    Mercard will be nice, too - when it arrives. It will be cheap because of the huge number that will be produced, and Intel needs Linux to run on it quickly so they can get a lot of early adopters to use (and test!) it.

    Even Colbolt is leaving MIPS to move to Intel because of the better performance for the money.

    Sure, we want hardware choice, but don't get mad at Intel for making pretty good products and trying to sell them. (PIII serial number excluded, of course)

    --Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com [thehungersite.com]

  • Re:Read your own comments! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Sure, AMD is making big improvements, but they don't have a great choice in motherboards yet, and they aren't that much cheaper than Intel
    at the same performace level - and Intel can do better multiprocessing (because of the motherboard situation) at the moment."


    Why do you think there aren't motherboards available in quantities, for AMD? Have you heared of some Taiwanese manufacturers that got sued by Intel for making such mobos? And do you know why Gateway decided not to use AMD chips? Because there is an agreement (value 80 to 100 $) between Intel and Gateway.




  • It's obvious that Intel is scared shitless of Athlon. They are trying to nail down as many companies as possible. I see these investments happening together with the lawsuits Intel has started against VIA, Everex, Asus and others. Intel has a *!*LOT*!* of cash, so they are using it to prevent the market from adopting AMD chips. Looks like they have read a page from Microsoft's strategy.
    Only my 0.02, don't sue me if you disagree.




  • Maybe you are right, but I'd like to see the source - otherwise I might suspect you are just making this up.

    Anyway, Intel sued MB manufactures for making multiprocessing MB? One word Why? You can't just sue someone, you know - you do need a reason.

    --Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com [thehungersite.com]

  • ...and don't forget the $ in "Chip Maker$".

    If Intel funds Linux/*BSD development to improve their performance on Intels, why complain? Your Intels will run faster. If you want non-Intel hardware to run faster too, get the manufacturers of those chips to pony up some $$ as well.

    Or leave that to the hobbyists (not necessarily a bad choice!).

    In a free-software world, there's little point in complaining about someone investing $$ to improve software, even if it's for just one platform.

    It's not the money that'll hurt the community, it's the poor-quality, non-portable software that might result from that investment. But if the community doesn't defend itself against that, it's going to hurt itself anyway, whether for $$ or to pursue the latest "in" platform.

  • hihi (Score:2)

    by arnim ( 117833 )
    funny to read: Intel is investing in SuSE because we want to encourage the diffusion of Linux on Intel-based computers in Europe

    vs.
    SuSE will use the investments to set up new sales and support offices worldwide.

    and "worldwide" in this case probably doesn't mean europe :)

  • Re:This could spell doom for the Wintel alliance (Score:3)

    by CryoMax ( 113056 ) on Wednesday November 24, 1999 @12:41PM (#1506163) Homepage
    As others have spelled out, Intel's invested in several other OS's. It suits their interests -- they realize that if they can get everyone's OS to run on their platform, they can play both ends against the middle. At that point, they won't HAVE to care what OS gets used, they can be assured people will probably be using their processors. Then they can concentrate on what their own marketing and development.

    The Microsoft fallout is probably threatening them a little, especially with AMD's resurging competition. Since Intel was almost completely "kept" by Microsoft, they had one advantage -- they could direct a lot more of their time and energy on development (albeit almost solely for Microsoft's purposes...) and the focus the Wintel alliance gave them is being eroded by new competitors and alternative OSes.

    Maybe we'll see a Lintel alliance? Perhaps. But I think also perhaps Intel would like to simply promote their architecture for every OS out there. And after Microsoft, they'd probably be a little gunshy about official "alliances" with any one particular OS in the future...


    --
    If it's not important, you can probably find it in...

  • Tell us about problems at feedback@suse.de. We do what we can. If there's a serious problem on AMD, we'll try to fix it, of course.
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
  • > But $12 million+ for SuSE is nothing to sneeze at, either!

    That's 12 million EURO. Which leads me to ask, what's the exchange rate of a euro to dollars?

    Oh, and how the hell do I generate a euro with this sun keyboard? it's printed on the '4' key, but no combination of hitting/mashing 4, shift, compose, alt graph, anything will actually generate it. What a lose.

  • Re:DON'T FORGET THE 'TEL'in 'WINTEL' (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux was started on x86, that does
    not mean it is an x86 only project.

    talk to linus if you doubt this.

    Second linux Alpha has done a lot of good for
    linux x86, one by making linux 64 bit clean.
    now when you drop in your new x86-64 bit chip
    things will work out much better.
    Thats the power of linux.

    Third AMD also makes x86 chips.
  • redhat just opened an office in germany, but they don't get anywhere until they get one thing done:ISDN.

    i just looked in the redhat-sollution-db for ISDN: 2 hits, the best was from 9/14/99, lots of URLs where to find help on the net.

    ISDN-setup is in SUSEs YAST for years. nearly every german company has ISDN, most linux-users are "power-users" => have ISDN at home. (it's just lots more common here than in the US )

  • Umm I've been working for Red Hat for almost 2
    years now 8)
  • Maybe VA Linux has the best business proposition with Intel? God only knows why they even went into the Linux OEM business. Userbase is a bunch of bloody screaming ingrate armchair CEO's, all too quick to toss aside their Do It Yourself philosophy when they could just as easily browbeat a company the moment they don't bleat in unison to the orthodoxy of every faction. Their philosophy in a nutshell: if you can't cover every last base, profitable or no, you SUCK you're EVIL and you must be DESTROYED.
  • Once upon a time I picked a retail copy of SuSE Linux 6.1, largely because it happened to carry a large number of "latest versions" to be had on CD(s).

    After installation I was confronted by a bug in their kppp implementation and after a quick look at newsgroups didn't offer any solutions at the time I decided to take advantage of their free 60-day tech support and dropped them an email. After several days I received an automated reply saying they'd be getting back to me soon. That 60 days is distant history and the only thing I've received from SuSE since my support enquiry has been a promotional leaflet that arrived by snail-mail.

    I could have made an effort trying to figure out the solution to my problem by myself and then helping others struggling with the same bug but I was counting on SuSE to follow through with their promised support feedback. Meanwhile I kept booting to another fully functional Linux distro, got another upgrade to that and eventually realized SuSE 6.1 wasn't worth the space it was occupying any more.

    I'm sure many people received the tech support from SuSE that they paid for so I'd appreciate hearing some success stories from satisfied SuSE users. Does their email support work or did you have to fax or phone them to get an answer?

    Personally I would have been satisfied with any kind of non-automated reply but getting totally ignored left a little sour taste in my mouth. As Linux moves closer to attracting Windows users and even absolute newbies the question of tech support will become an issue of vital importance. While I know how to navigate the Linux documentation sites and newsgroups I want to be able to recommend a well-supported distribution to anyone interested in trying out Linux. Every company selling Linux packages with support should keep their end of the bargain or we'll see lots of disgruntled newbies turning their backs to our platform for good. I'm afraid we might even see the MS-friendly press making a big issue of shortcomings in Linux' tech support and to many readers any Linux is Linux is Linux.

  • Yes, because Intel hardware is relatively fast, mature, and inexpensive. I haven't been able to make any variation of Red Hat work on my Athlon 500 system, and I still like AMD.

    The Gateway/Intel deal seems to be dead. Once again today, I must point out this article [theregister.co.uk] at The Register [theregister.co.uk] to illustrate my point.

    And to be redundant, yes this is probably less than a complete coincidence. Consider that SuSE is German, and the Germans are also turning some screws with the EU on getting an embargo of PIII's.

    I maintain that Intel is a bigger 'enemy' than Microsoft...

  • Suse is profitable while Redhat isn't. OK. The problem is Suse is more on commercial (=retail) side as oposed to Redhat (which business model looks more and more like a mix between Netscape and Oracle). Suse is competing with Caldera, Mandrake and Corel. As a matter of fact, within two years I doubt Suse or Caldera will exist on the retail, which will belong to Corel. Corel is one of the few software houses that really understand how retail business should be done. Conclusion: this investment is welcomed because it fuels them before the desktop and retail battle starts. Nevertheless the summ is too small in order to build a strong product AND company. It is not too late, but it's too little.
  • Linux is an x86 project. All the ports are basically niche projects.
    If you want a multi-architecture OS, go with NetBSD.
    ...wich basically is a niche project.
  • SuSE's much-vaunted 60-day installation support isn't worth a great deal IMHO. For example there are a lot of things such as basic network services which aren't covered even when their configuration files are maintained by the SuSEconfig utility (part of YaST). At least this was the case fairly recently. It's not too surprising, really: if you want good technical support with any OS you have to pay through the nose for it.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • I wouldn't hail Corel the conquering retail distro just yet. They are very new to this market, and their first display of a Linux distro is not very encouraging. But that's what happens when you try to release a product in time for a big convention (Gnome 1.0 anybody?)
  • Hmm - just a few articles ago there was a story about the EU putting an embargo on intel... surely that doesn't bode well for the SuSE investment, SuSE being a German company and all.

    This could get interesting... maybe one big mess?

    The timing is empecable, is this really a good thing??
  • Ok, I look at these posts and I see a problem. It seems everyone is all happy that suse is getting money, etc. However, I would like to point out that Intel is possibly going to be under an embargo to Europe - this very story was posted earlier today. Doesn't that seem a little strange?

    If you don't see the connection, then think about how many hihg-tech jobs would be created if Intel were to open multiple software offices in Europe. These jobs would be filled by Europeans (not tiny green men, against popular belief). Goverments LIKE high-tech jobs because they pay well (more taxes for the government to collect), very low pollution (less for the government to spend), and make people happier as well. SO, how inclined do you think Intel would be to actually open these offices if their own product was unable to be sold in Europe?

    They say the world is run by money. They're right. I don't like the PIII serial number. All my systems will not have PIIIs in them - besides, the athlons are proving themselves to be better. And I can't wait till the upgradeable ones come out! To be able to upgrade my own L1 cache - and up to 8MB! Woohoo!
  • Compiling with --nodeps?

    I think you're referring to RPMs.

    News flash: RPMs are not compatable between distributions. Is this a SuSE problem? Nope. This will apply to any RPM-based distrubution which isn't overtly a Red Hat clone.

    The LSB will solve this.
  • Erm hello??

    No I'm talking about non RPM'ed code - stuff that isn't nicely packaged... you know... the stuff that's actually useful?

    SuSE RPM's are great, they work really well, if you don't mind being totally limited to what they offer in RPM format.

    Please don't moderate this, it adds, nothing to the discusion, I'm merely replying to someone else.
  • SuSE is scared by Corel and Intel is scared by AMD. While Intel can still crush AMD, SuSE don't have much chances against Corel, the old warrior of the destop and retail. And their Linux distro shouln't be the best in order to succeed. Corel's marketing machinery will do the most in conquering the desktop. Near Corel Linux pour in WordPerfect, thousand of fonts, CorelDRAW! for Linux, other ten smaller applications, tens of tousand of GIFs and charge Joe User forty US dollars (more or less). And provode them the usual W95/98 GUI in the process.
  • I'm glad to hear that SuSE is able to offer satisfying support via email and I truly hope my case was just a ghost in the machine. The most important aspect of tech support is IMO that they'll simply _try_ solving their customers' problems.

    In your case RedHat obviously screwed up with their support to you, but apparently they at least tried offering support and your cry for help was answered although the problem wasn't solved (yet). I assume you at least got a "non-automated" reply from RedHat.

    One last point I'd like to make is that when using a distro put together by a "fringe" Linux company the user relies more on the tech support simply because there's less information and discussion available about it in the public forums. That's the "Network Effect" at work even within the sprouting Linux market.

  • Bootdisks not working on K6? Not sure what you're referring to.

    I use a K6 myself, and have installed all versions of Suse since 5.1 on it without trouble.

    Looking in the SuSE support database, I see the following two articles: Faulty processor AMD K6-2 with 100Mhz system clock [sdb.suse.de] and AMD K6 with more than 32MB - system hangs [sdb.suse.de].

    The former seems to be an acknowledged flaw in the k6 processor which can be replaced under warrantee. The latter is less clear but also seems an acknowledged AMD bug (see the article).

    The other issue, of course, was the Athlon, which did not boot with the 6.2 floppy images, as the MTRR support we built into said floppies in this past summer did not work on the Athlons. I'm sure if AMD had sent samples to the SuSE offices, this would not have occured, but a athlon boot floppy image promptly appeared on the FTP site after the problem was described. A simple call to SuSE support would have gotten a floppy mailed to you if you have no way to download it yourself.

    Or did I miss the issue you were talking about? SuSE can only fix problems they know about. feedback@suse.de [mailto] is your friend.

  • Tech support should have undergone a _big_ improvement about halfway through the life-cycle of 6.1. Staff is up, a new problem tracking system is in place, etc.

    I'm sorry of course that we failed to answer your question, I certainly tried to answer all the ones I was handed in that time frame, and believe I did an acceptable job at it.

    Best of luck with whatever distribution you use.

  • SUSE's searchable support database is your best
    bet when the search in the READMEs/HOWTOs is
    exhausted and even Deja [deja.com] scan didn't resolve the problem.

    I'll never forget the moment, when I found a
    solution for a problem (ISDN driver didn't
    change charge interval) in the SuSE support
    database for my Redhat Linux 5.1 setup.

    This happened after two days of reading docs
    (the 110k isdn README contained the word 'Attention!'
    more than incredible 40 times), compiling various
    package releases, searching news
    groups, searching Red Hat's support database
    (official RH ISDN support was non existant at this
    time).

    The solution was that if a (seemingly unrelated
    variable) was not defined in a config file, the
    thing didn't work.

    To be sure that I hadn't missed the solution,
    I later grepped the 110 k docu and the FAQ which
    came with that software package for thar variable
    name. Nothing.

    This adventure may be insignificant for the casual
    reader, but for me it was like finding water in
    the desert after a two day march. So once the SuSE
    support database has saved my (emotional) life.
    Thank you SuSE people for your professional
    attitude.

    And this is the reason I feel happy seeing SuSE
    getting even more fuel which will help them to
    provide even better support.

    Go SuSE, Go Linux!
  • Uh... Gateway is going to be offering the Athlon 700 MHz processor in their computers. See C|Net News [cnet.com].

    Motherboard availability for AMD is probably simply because Intel architecture has dominated, and manufacturers don't yet see a profitable cost/benefit tradeoff for retooling or expanding to incorporate the AMD stuff (AMD's using what, Slot A stuff? Intel's Slot 1? I forget, but know they're different.)

    The lawsuit Intel filed against Via (See story on C|Net [cnet.com]) is about licensing agreement violations and patent infringement, and doesn't actually have anything to do with AMD.


    --
    If it's not important, you can probably find it in...

  • I'm curious, where is it mentioned what is or isn't covered by SuSE's 60-day installation support?

    They tout SuSE Linux' networking capabilities right on the box and I would find it strange if they didn't support basic outta-box ppp connectivity (which "installed" alright but was broken).

    Apart from my experience that "SuSE Technical Service" didn't get back to me despite their automated reply said so I don't think that support which doesn't cover getting online by ordinary ppp is adequate for new users.
  • I have 6.1 and their email support
    and user mailing list were very very
    helpful to this newbie.

    I would definitely recommend SuSE.

    I look forward to 6.3!!

  • Well, your thoughts certainly _sound_ good, but these things really don't happen so quickly. Intel's response on Thursday to a news event post Monday is not that they are investing in a Linux company. Investments just don't happen that fast.

  • ...that Penguin Computing [penguincomputing.com] still sells AMD systems; Compaq [digital.com] sells Alphas running Linux; Apple [apple.com] still sells PowerPC systems that are Linux-compatible; and that you can still by SPARC stations from Sun [sun.com] or for cheap from many auction houses and hardware resellers.


    The Kulturwehrmacht [onelist.com]
  • We are getting quite off-topic here. :-)

    ppp is supported. I've called ISPs with the customer on the line to explain to them what is misconfigured in their routers. Of course, it's usually much more simple than that....

    As for kppp the reason you had a problem is this: Some dialer software locks the modem device. Some dialer software expects the ppp daemon to lock the modem device. The former is more "proper"... but the dialer developers probably have their own reasons (cross-platform issues perhaps?).

    One solution would be for the dialer to always have the responsibility, and either have to run pppd with the 'lock' option, or lock the device itself. This requires custom patches to many dialers. These patches must be maintained, and are in some cases, messy.

    Another solution would be to have more than one ppp configuration file. I'm not even going to discuss how messy this is.

    The decision was to leave well enough alone, and let the configuration file /etc/ppp/options be set up to work with the majority of dialer software, and for kppp users to comment out the 'lock' line if they wished to use kppp. You see, kppp isn't even our recommended solution. The manual pretty clearly states wvdial is the recommended way to do it, and includes step-by-step instructions. In 6.2, it's even easier, as there's a straightforward configuration screen in YaST called Configure a PPP Network.

    Why do we push people away from kppp? For 2 main reasons.

    1. Wvdial generates better init strings.
    2. Wvdial more reliably logs in, with tricky logic that can handle most script-based connections as well as PAP and CHAP.

    Depending upon my memory, the other problem you could have been running into was kppp simply failing to work at all periodically. This was a kppp bug, and an update to it was available on the FTP site.

    toodles.

  • You gotta lot of phantasy. You should write another one of those interesting conspiray theory books. And don't trust your neighbour, he's an alien spying on you!
    --
    Michael Hasenstein
    http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
  • I did search through their DB as suggested by the "auto-mail" but nothing there applied to the v6.1 problem I was facing - at least at that time. Went even as far as crawling through the german-language entries! :-)

    Good to see that most replies are positive. According to an AC claiming to belong to SuSE tech support the company apparently boosted their support capabilities some time after I had given up.

    Anyway, I wasn't bashing SuSE here but simply trying to point out that support is very important and it'll only become more so as new users begin entering the platform. Perhaps I was afraid that none of the Intel investment was going to address that issue. ;-)

  • Now I'm at a loss.

    You state:

    No I'm talking about non RPM'ed code - stuff that isn't nicely packaged... you know... the stuff that's actually useful?

    I think you're suggesting that only source-form programs are useful. SuSE does include all packages on the CD in source form except commercial ones, etc. These source form packages are stored in RPMs.

    If you simply mean that you have some useful software which is not included in the distribution, and that this software does not build on SuSE, then I am quite surprised. I have built many many packages on SuSE (megaHal, new versions of vim, new versions of mutt, grip, gcd, in-house Wind River software, irc servers and clients.. etc etc) over a long period of time, all without trouble. There was a point (a long time ago) where libcurses wasn't in an ideal spot, but that's about as far as it goes for any trouble I've encountered.

    If you truly are encountering lots of packages which refuse to build on SuSE, take a look at what's breaking. I suspect the package maintainer is making some silly assumptions. Example: some tcl software I acquired which had the following line at the start of the software #!/usr/local/bin/tclsh Obviously, this wasn't working as my tclsh was located in /usr/bin..

    In any event, please do send criticisms to feedback@suse.de.

    SuSE RPM's are great, they work really well, if you don't mind being totally limited to what they offer in RPM format. Same as above..

    Please don't moderate this, it adds, nothing to the discusion, I'm merely replying to someone else.

    Well, we're _certainly_ off the topic of IPOs. However, we're spot on the discussion you started about SuSE.

    I remain curious, however: what are you feeding -nodeps into? I just issued the following command on my Suse 6.2 box: jrodman@Castrovalva:/usr/man >find . -name "*\.[123456789]\.*" -exec zgrep -l -e "-nodeps" {} \; I do have the allman package installed, so this will find the string -nodeps as part of any man page of any package in SuSE. I also spot-checked about 20 configure scripts, not finding this switch present in these either. The following are my findings: ./man8/rpm.8.gz ./allman/man8/rpm.8.gz

    PS. How I wish i knew how to see the processor time used by a process and all its children. This grepping in compressed files would be a lovely thing to compare to NT.

  • I don't mean to piss all over your parade, well actually I do :p

    First, Linus does most of His work on Alpha AFAIK, and it's a 21264 too! The Alpha port closely follows the x86 code.

    Second, all of the non-x86 ports are NOT 'niche' projects. The Alpha, PPC, and SPARC ports have active developers! Each are included in the main kenrel source.

    Third, having been on several of the NetBSD lists I would have to say NetBSD is a 'niche' project.

    Fourth, I believe He meant VA and the rest of the bunch only have INTEL x86 chips! Have a look, I don't see any AMD, Cryix chips anywhere...


    rbf, who is typing this on an Alpha running Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 with Linux 2.2.13.
  • My experience has been different. I'm not a programmer or a developer -- barely more than a newbie, and just about everything I've ever compiled from source has gone smoothly and runs correctly. I've also sucessfully used RH RPMs with SuSE when I wanted to.

    Besides that, SuSE has added many new KDE apps (you can get them in their KDE service downloads) and the X-server support and development is excellent.

    Besides that the distro works and I use it every day as both a Samba server and a desktop.

    Back to the topic -- I'm glad to see SuSE forming this partnerships and growing so well. I think it is heathly for the entire Linux community.

  • "within two years I doubt Suse or Caldera will exist on the retail"
    SuSE is too strong in the Euro market to dissapear any time soon, much less a year or two. I will admit that the US company falls short in PR and marketing; perhaps the attention from Intel will help them start rolling.
    "Nevertheless the summ [sic] is too small in order to build a strong product AND company"
    Hey what do ya know! The product is strong, to date, SuSE is the most stable linux distro I have tried. I won't jump on a soapbox and scream it's praises though, after all, it's about having the freedom to choose the OS the suits your preferences.
    Any company that wants to throw cash at open source companies is OK by me.
  • These jobs would be filled by Europeans (not tiny green men, against popular belief)
    I was thinking Bunny People [adviceforpcs.com] actually.
    email:3 -> e
  • > That's 12 million EURO. Which leads me to ask, what's the exchange rate of a euro to dollars? According to Universal Currency Converter(tm) [xe.net], one EUR = 1.01834 USD
  • Hey, just wanted to jump on the occasion to congratulate you guys at SuSE for your very professional and complete Linux-Distro. It was SuSE 6.2 that provided me with enough "dektop" functionality to completely switch to Linux...

    Keep up the good work!
    --
  • NO. Really. Did you look at the last distro, 6.2? Full of ancient versions on the one hand, beta versions on the other hand.
    Sometimes when SuSE gets out some "updated" packages, newer versions of the software exist for months.
    (Tcl/Tk, DDD, gcc, apache, xemacs for example).
    6.1 and 6.2 were really bad here. 6.3 looks more up to date, and would be worth buying if you like SuSE, 6.2 really wasn't worth the money.
  • I installed SuSE 6.0 some time ago and all went well except the DHCP kept dropping me. So I called the 1-800 number & talked to a very nice guy (Hi Norm!) who couldn't quite solve my problem. He reported that no one else ever seemed to have a problem with it, and suggested that maybe my ISP had weirdo settings on their server. While there was no solution for me (i figured it out later on me own), I still thought SuSE support was pretty good. Norm took his time & tried to get a solution (even called me back twice), so I'm giving points for effort.

  • The wintel alliance has been dead for quite some time. Microsoft doesn't much care of Intel, Intel doesn't like Microsoft. In a way, Intel and Microsoft are actually competitors.

    If Intel gets a monopoly, the price of CPUs goes up, and PC-sales go down a bit. Allmost every PC comes bundeled with Windows, so Windows sales will also be hurt. That is why Microsoft insisted that Intel licence the MMX-instructions to competing CPU manufacturers. Microsoft wants and needs competion - in every area but their own.

    And it also works the other way. If Microsoft gets a monopoly (hmm..), it will hike up prices, PC sales go down a bit and Intel sells less CPUs. That is why Intel is investing in competing operating systems.

  • The AltGr+4 key should work: . You might need an update from your vendor for fonts+xwindows. Microsoft people need the latest font patches from microsoft.

    Many browsers accept € (). Select 'HTML formatted' from the submit box, and pray that /. does not fubar your submission again...

  • Grrr, I hate /. software! The last line should have started:

    Many browsers accept € (€).

    Whatever you do: don't use 'preview' in submissions with & in them.

  • You're right, never thought about it.. then again I do have a cisco at home ;-P So I think I maybe forgiven ;-)

    Also, RedHat has always been much more expensive.. What was it, 120 DM or so? versus SuSE's 99 DM (79 for students).
  • The EU won't embargo P3's. It'd be shooting ourselves in the foot.
  • The Euro and the dollar are about the same, with the euro a couple of cents higher
  • I don't think SuSE stock is being traded publicy.
  • Sheesh did anyone actually *read* the STOA
    report? (Its in English).

    1. Its quite clear that the issue is processor serial numbers in general not Intel in specific.

    2. It reccomends that an expert group consider and
    that the European parliament the consider these
    considerations as a basis for EU legislation on PSN equipped devices.

    Since the EU parliament doesn't have the power to initiate legislation of this type the whole thing
    can be summarised as a "a load of Hot-air".
    The rest is sensationalising...



    Andrew
  • If you're gonna do non-standard thngs with your distrib, regardless of whose you use, you really need to take th esmall amount of time to learn how that particular base distrib works so you can sucesfully modify it. I do all sorts of non-standard things with my SuSE-bases (including my mobile mp3 player), just as I have with some other distribs. Each has its own little quirks that need to be addressed, but in no case are they insurmountable blockages.

    In my opinion, SuSE is like slackware with current packages and RPM support - it's pretty easy to turn of all the automation and do everything yourself but you also get the benefits of easy package management. Of all the distribs I've tried (which unfortunately doesn't include debian yet) SuSE has been the easiest to get working initially and the easiest to disable the little automatic pieces in.

    I'd be happy to help you with those customizations you were having problems with, sufi, if you drop me an e-mail. :)

    --Danny, who needs to try FreeBSD again and Debian for the first time...

  • Sorry for the spelling error.. It was a mistype.

    Your point about running IA32 code is good, but invalid here - we have the code, don't forget!

    As for Mercad being only for servers - maybe for the first year, but not much after that.

    --Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com [thehungersite.com]

  • I run SuSE on my intel box at home. It's great and definatley worth the 6 cd's that 6.2 ships on. However, I heard a rumor that they were working on a PPC port? That's quite cool--it'd like to dual boot my powerbook. Are these rumors founded (ie has anyone else heard this?) and if so, what does intel's investment mean to this?

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