Enough please for the love of God enough. It is more than obvious to the world the the linux community severely disapproves of anyone getting into bed with MS. Novell made a bad decision and will suffer for it. Novell has sunk a lot of money and time into community projects. OOO, Hula, aparmor, auto build, and on and on. I'm not defending the MS deal but enough of the bashing. It's
unproductive. The Eagles wrote a song called "GET OVER IT". We need to just get over it.

There are alot of people that feel that this deal is a "sleeper" attack on gnu/Linux from the inside out.

It is their belief that this could lead to the demise of their favorite OS.

You're asking them to give up fighting for something that they believe in?

That's a tall order.

Personally I'll take the George Bush approach on this, and not simply "Cut and Run" thank you.

The discussion regarding how it affects the GPL or the future of linux is healthy. It's the comments slamming Novell that sould come to an end soon. No I'm not asking people to give up what they believe in. In fact I'd like to see as much effort go into bragging on what ever distro they use, as the effort to slam Novell. The Novell deal has been hashed over and over.I was disappointed in the deal for many reasons. One them was from being blindsided by it. I have listened to every openaudio cast that they have and thought Novell really got it. The question is what do I do now. Waste time calling suse a garbage distro. (Which is false. I have done a lot of distro hoppin and opensuse is pretty nice. Before the deal went through I was going to put it on my laptop.)Or move on.

There are lots of great Linux distributions out there that are as good or better than SUSE. I was fortunate enough to pick one that I can believe in and support. As I see it now, I will never have to buy or use SUSE myself, I will never recommend SUSE to a private or corporate user. I've never had to use a Dell machine and I won't because of some unethical pactices of their's in the past. Novell pulled of a selfish act on their part to partner with MS without any concern for the rest of the Linux community. Because of this I won't support SUSIE or any other Novell product.

Linux is free. free as in free speech and free as in free beer. ms and ms lovers need to get over it. that's how it is and will stay.

I've come back to SUSE.

I can't believe it. I never thought this would happen.

I have to admit that I too was shocked and disappointed with the MS/Novell deal, and I actually looked at other distributions, mainly Ubuntu. I was a CNE for Novell back in 1991, and basically lost my career when Microsoft crushed NetWare in the market. It changed my career then, and I'm afraid it my change my career now if I remain a suse-focused linux engineer. So I looked around, and this is what I found.

I have to admit that Ubuntu clearly has a better user support community, complete with forums, wiki's, how-to's, etc. You can post a question, and get an answer usually within just a few minutes. Not so in the suse forums. You post a suse question, then check back the next day to see if somebody responded. Huge difference. HUGE.

I also love how Ubuntu has a HUGE selection of available software, ready to install. Just type 'sudo apt-get install nameofapp' is very nice. Sure, you can do the same with yast, but the ubuntu/debian archives contains a massive collection, far more than suse archives.

BUT...............

After a month of kicking the Ubuntu tires, I have removed it off all my machines (five) and gone back to Suse, now running 10.2. To put it simply, Ubuntu is a great idea, but as of today, it sucks.

Ubuntu has a great community, but it's distro is at least four years behind suse. It's installer is stupid, it's hardware support sucks, it's drivers suck, it's stability sucks. I'm serious. Compared to SUSE, Ubuntu sucks.

Depending on your machine, IF you can get the ubuntu installer to work on your pc (have to d/l and try all three ubuntu installers: live, alternate, server), there's a high chance you will have to manually download and install drivers for: your video (all new nvidia/ati cards), your wireless LAN, and sound are the most common problems. This brings back ancient memories, I seem to recall about TEN years ago. Geez, I can't remember the last time I actually had to manually configure X settings on a SuSE install. SUSE's installer detects your card and monitor settings, and sets the optimal settings for you. Even both of my brand new systems with double-wide flat screen monitors are auto-detected by SUSE beautifully.

As a consultant, setting up linux servers for clients, I need a distro that isn't going to waste my time chasing down drivers, or trying to figure out why devices aren't being detected/configured correctly. I'll go with the smartest distro, and from what I've seen, SUSE is the clear choice.

The other big reason I've come back to SUSE is because I see Novell/SUSE stuff in all the other distributions. It reminds me back in the 1990's when I was looking to buy a new car. After the third dealer told me "Hey, it even has a Mazda engine in it", well, I asked myself "why not look at Mazda?" So, I went and looked at Mazda cars next, and sure enough bought one.

For those of you wondering what Novell sponsored products I'm talking about seeing in other distro's, here's some:

Many default to gnome (owned by Novell)
Many default to Evolution (Novell) for their email app
Many rely on the .net/mono (Novell)
Hula (supported by Novell) is their up and coming MS-Exchange replacement (still in alpha but looking good)

They've invested in many other products and areas.

So what?

What have other distro's brought to the table that has been adopted by competing distro's? I'll have to give redhat credit for rpm's, but that contribution was ages ago.

I still don't like the MS/Novell arrangement, but I'm hoping Novell doesn't get kicked in the nads again by Microsoft. We all know MS is going to try it, they cant help it, they are scum, not to be trusted.

So.......

If you are unhappy with the MS/Novell deal, I suggest you take a look at the other distro's. They talk a big game, but in the end, you'll see that Novell is far ahead of the others. That's why they remain the most popular distribution.

If your interest in linux leans toward just curious and tinkering, then feel free to leave SUSE behind. However, if your career actually depends on your ability to support linux installations, then you might just make your life more difficult if you walk away from SUSE. I did it. Didn't like it. I'm back.

My two cents..... your mileage may differ....

flames > /dev/null

My view is that freedom of choice is what makes computing so fun an enjoyable. The whole reason I ditched Windows and went to Ubuntu as miy fina;l choice of linux distribution I that I was sick and tired of constantly having to run Microsoft's auto update wizard and always having Internet explore crash and burn. I personally have a wait and see approach to the whole Microsoft Novel collaboration effort. I think that Redmond needs to open up its stead fast licensing policy and release versions of their flagship products under the gpl.

"I also love how Ubuntu has a HUGE selection of available software, ready to install. Just type 'sudo apt-get install nameofapp' is very nice. Sure, you can do the same with yast, but the ubuntu/debian archives contains a massive collection, far more than suse archives."


I'm so tired of hearing about Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Why don't you go to the source and just use Debian? Debian is far superior in every way to Ubuntu.Less bloat-faster,better quality control-more stable!

I use Debian etch with some sources from Sid (for my cutting edge urges!)
I have tried Suse and found it a little bloated for my taste, though the look of the o/s was very polished and professional looking.The deal with Microsoft was a clincher for me though, I tossed all my Suse cd's into the trash.

debian is an excellent replacement.

I look at it this way.

Novell is a company who attempts to make proper business decisions in order to return a profit (as with any company).

openSuSE is a community project that is sponsored by Novell, similar to Fedora/Red Hat. Since Novell uses openSuSE as their base for SLED & such, in my opinion, the community has much more say. Therefore, I think this deal isn't the so called "5 year demise of suse linux."

(Getting off topic)
Running Ubuntu for 6 months with no issues. Debian is a very good distro, but I picked Ubuntu because it's far more up-to-date. I will admit, Ubuntu is not as stable, but not Fedora Core 5 or Debian Sid unstable.