06.19.08
Microsoft’s Bad Smell Follows OpenSUSE
Complete disengagement from Novell the better option for OpenSUSE?
For only a few hours yesterday, we had put this banner up at the top. At the advice of some people, including my co-editor Shane, it was pulled down. Nevertheless, now that OpenSUSE 11.0 is released, it’s clear that some people hesitate or resent due to Novell’s alliance with Microsoft. Here is an example from the beginning of Andrew Hudson’s review at Linux Format:
Since the takeover by Novell and the subsequent patent covenant that Novell entered into with Microsoft, it’s been a bit of a rough community ride for Novell’s free and open source distribution. Although OpenSUSE itself is now well established, it’s having to play catch up with Fedora which split from Red Hat Linux almost five years ago (before Novell even announced the SUSE acquisition).
Here is another new example from Download Squad
Yet OpenSUSE often gets a bad wrap. There’s that whole Novell/Microsoft/the world is ending conspiracy thing going on, for one thing. Certainly when Novell bought SuSE, it was disturbing. What were Novell’s intentions? Where were things going to go from this point? Was openSUSE going to suffer for it?
No matter how hard OpenSUSE tries, the bad reputation due to the Microsoft deal just won’t go away. Someone ought to really just fork and create a truly Novell-independent SUSE — you know, without all that baggage. As long as OpenSUSE helps development of SLED and SLES, it may be better to avoid OpenSUSE. There’s just no choice. █
Pink Panther said,
June 19, 2008 at 5:52 pm
> now that OpenSUSE 11.0 is released
Thanks for telling! And I thought you post good news only on Saturdays
…
Victor Soliz said,
June 19, 2008 at 6:23 pm
The rest of that article is quite lame, it dares to compare openSUSE as a good contender for Hardy Heron. Sorry, but I don’t think a couple of alleged improvements would be worth the hassle of having to deal with a Novell controlled distro. If you think openSUSE is innocent then it ought to be forked. Apologists come here saying that it is truly FOSS software, then what’s stopping them from forking out of Novell’s hands?
handa said,
June 20, 2008 at 12:06 am
Because they are reasonable people.
SteveHiggins said,
July 12, 2008 at 1:45 pm
If you want real Linux go with Debian or Slackware.
Only n00bz use (duh)buntu