Bonum Certa Men Certa

SUSE Became a Niche Product/Market

Certification for SUSE
Picture contributed by a reader



Summary: OpenSUSE numbers, some other SUSE news, and a few words about the status of the product

IT HAS been just over a week since OpenSUSE celebrated a new release, which was mostly covered by FOSS writers, e.g. [1, 2] (one needs to know authors' names). The corporate press seems to pay attention only to Ubuntu releases. Some people upgrade their desktops and servers, so download numbers may not mean all that much (e.g. regarding growth). OpenSUSE did publish numbers:



Our download redirector counted for the first 24 hours the download of 93761 media, the distribution over the various types is:

* NonOss Addon CD BiArch: 1452 * 32-bit x86: 48075 (total) o Net: 2489 o DVD: 31840 o GNOME-LiveCD: 7392 o KDE-LiveCD: 5561 o Addon-Lang: 793 * 64-bit x86-64: 44234 (total) o Net: 2444 o DVD: 32927 o GNOME-LiveCD: 4031 o KDE-LiveCD: 4378 o Addon-Lang: 454



This is not particularly impressive, but there will always be someone begging to differ. Many downloads are for server setups or testing. In production environments CentOS is a lot more commonplace. Apart from the release there is almost no news. The release itself was mostly mentioned by SUSE sites like this or that, or even the official blog that speaks of Google funding (moving on to other topics):

Googles Code-in is a program aimed at pre-university students between the age of 13 and 17. It starts on the 21. November, 2011. For this program we provide a list of tasks that are both fun and challenging for the students. Students who work on these tasks get a designated mentor assigned who will guide and help them. The tasks students can pick vary from writing or re-factoring code to doing marketing for the project. Simply everything a FOSS project has to do. Students can of course select tasks according to their interests.


It would be wiser to help distributions that do not serve Microsoft's agenda.

There is some packaging news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and few reviews of the distribution. There are far fewer reviews than articles that just mention the release. In fact, we found less than a handful proper reviews. Not impressive at all...

Andrew Wafaa is running for the OpenSUSE Board as a non-employee, of which there are several who are enthusiastic to just spread OpenSUSE of all distributions (as misguided as that can be). There are also some HOWTOs out there [1, 2, 3] and an installation video for the new release. Banshee makes its appearance again in SUSE-affiliated blogs and Balsam does too. The SUSE blogs are by far the most dominant sources of news because OpenSUSE is hardly mentioned outside them. Novell's PR is pretty much defunct and once in a matter of weeks we found them speaking about Vibe; well, they said they had axed it, but recently they mentioned it again. Novell just cannot seem to make up its mind. Given that the head of PR lost his job, it must be chaotic there.

The bottom line is, SUSE or OpenSUSE are not dominant. They were quite dominant before the Microsoft deal, which turned them into "niche" -- a distribution for those wishing to pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux although they needn't.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
 
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago
The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025