03.21.12
Posted in Microsoft, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft wants to be able to nail the competition at any time
Summary: Criticism of SUSE and a timely new example of Microsoft’s intimidation tactics
THE OpenSUSE project (not community) has a new milestone and coverage comes from SUSE-friendly sites for the most part.
The problem we have with OpenSUSE is that, being part of SUSE, it is controlled in part by Microsoft interests. It increases the risk of Microsoft lawsuits and extortion, which helps not at all. See this discussion in Slashdot about one who has to run a business under constant threat of Microsoft litigation:
We recently told you about a virtual desktop service for iPads and other devices that seems to exist only because it breaks Microsoft’s Windows licensing rules in order to provide an unbeatable price: free, with the option to upgrade to a more robust service for just $5 a month.
The company is being threatened by Microsoft, which gives Microsoft a sense of control and the rest of us a sense of fear. This is what SUSE has done to GNU/Linux too when Novell signed its deal with Microsoft in 2006. Why support SUSE anymore? People oughtn’t. █
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03.13.12
Posted in Antitrust, Courtroom, Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE at 3:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: As Novell’s assets are sold and nervous system rots, Microsoft is filing aplenty and giving Novell lots of work in the long-standing antitrust case
THE CASE of Novell against Microsoft may be very old, but it carries on regardless:
Novell has filed its opposition [PDF] to Microsoft’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law in the WordPerfect antitrust case. It’s 160 pages long, just the memorandum, plus 4 exhibits and appendix after appendix — 54 in all. This document [PDF] is a list of what is in all of the appendices. Microsoft’s motion was 137-pages long, if you recall. And this is bigger. It’s, frankly, amazing.
Microsoft could probably just use money to buy more time until Novell is entirely defunct.
For SUSE, the future is already Microsoft-dependent, but for some who escape Unity it seems like OpenSUSE is an oddball safety net:
While it is totally insignificant why I switched from my previous distribution to openSUSE, I would share the reason. I had been using Ubuntu since 2006 and when Ubuntu made a switch to Unity I found Global menus and extremely limited customization getting in my way. I was keeping a close eye on Unity development and when 11.10 was released it was clear that most of the customization that I wanted was not going to land in Ubuntu.
Using Unity became even more problematic when I bought my second monitor. I wanted to be able to use the second monitor more efficiently. Which was not possible with Unity.
I did try to disable Global Menu but Thunderbird, Firefox and Kate continued to give me problems. Honestly speaking I don’t want to do that unless that functionality (disabling Global Menu) is part of the distribution itself.
If the reason to use OpenSUSE is the failure of another distribution, then it does not speak much for success. The OpenSUSE newsletter was recently un-handled. As the community steps aside Microsoft will step in and use the corpse (and former reputation) of SUSE to tax GNU/Linux. Novell's headquarters are being sold. █
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03.07.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, OpenSUSE at 2:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A few words about the demise of OpenSUSE
THE OPENSUSE project (product rather) is one that I have tracked and to a certain extent been involved in since its inception. It is hard to no longer write so much about the project; it’s unavoidable, however, because there is hardly news to cover anymore. Even the formal newsletter for the project came to its end some days ago (unless someone revives it).
OpenSUSE’s community manager uses a platform where he is a guest writer to promote OpenSUSE, but it looks more like a feeble attempt to sell the story that there is still steam left in the project. The death knell was probably this Microsoft deal. It’s like another passage of ownership. █
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03.01.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 6:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Torvalds gets fed up with SUSE
OPENSUSE lost many of its key developers and leaders, including Greg, who works closely with Linus Torvalds. Not so long ago Greg et al. got Tumbleweed rolling, after they had founded OpenSUSE. “Tumbleweed was announced with or shortly after their 11.4 release. I was a bit skeptical at the time, because of my experience with other rolling distributions,” writes J.A. Watson.
The important news though is that according to Brian Proffitt and others, “Torvalds throws openSUSE security tantrum” (more strong language from him):
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has issued a rare public spanking for openSUSE after falling foul of its security procedures.
Torvalds has posted a rant on Google+ about his experience installing openSUSE on a MacBook Air. The installation requires the root password for many functions and he went to the Bugzilla thread to argue that this was a stupid policy, which got changes in some areas of the code, like adding wireless networks.
But the straw that broke the penguin’s back was when his daughter Daniela called him from school to complain that she couldn’t add a printer to her computer without the root password. Linus lost it, and went public with his complaints.
“He has a point,” writes Pogson. “There are systems where these settings are crucial for security but a kid’s notebook at school is proabably not one of them. In a business you may well not want 1000 nude photos to be printed in the boss’ office ( I have seen that. A student caught the principal’s password…) but in a school with the local system admin protecting what he wants to protect, not so much.”
“I think Linus has not tried Debian yet, so may be its time for Linus to give Debian a try,” writes Muktware. Debian GNU/Linux is indeed very good. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols , a fan of SUSE, responds to Torvalds and Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids characteristically use sensationalist headlines, just like those who covered the SP2 of SLE* 11 as though it was revolutionary because of the 3.0 Linux. Here is a toned-down article about it.
The bottom line is, SUSE and Torvalds are no friends. █
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02.25.12
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 9:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A look at the state of SUSE about a year after the sale of Novell
THE RECENT anniversary of SUSE (the company) is still being mentioned in some news sites and there is a discussion about an ARM port of OpenSUSE (Ubuntu and derivatives won the x86 space). Other than that, everything is quiet. The VAR Guy makes news out of nothing by speaking about SUSE partners — unnamed partners other than Microsoft:
Despite SUSE’s progress, plenty of challenges remain. Attachmate is privately held and doesn’t disclose financial results, so it’s unclear if SUSE-related profits are growing. Plus, some customers and partners lost faith in SUSE during the long Novell sale process, which consumed much of late 2010. And many Novell managers, some of which focused on SUSE, exited the company upon the Attachmate buyout. Net result: SUSE partners and customers had to navigate a lot of change in 2011.
Meanwhile, rival Red Hat continues to gain momentum on multiple fronts — promoting Linux, Jboss open source middleware, open source storage, open source virtualization and cloud computing, just to name a few. Red Hat is expected to deliver another round of strong quarterly results when it announces financials on March 21, 2012.
This was expected by us. Except for this press release, there is no news from SUSE. It merely talks about support from a developer, not a new client. To quote: “Azul Systems, the award-winning leader in Java runtime scalability, today announced the general availability of Zing 5 with support for an additional Linux distribution. Effective immediately, the Zing Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is now fully qualified on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.”
Here is an article about it. To quote:
Azul Systems has announced general availability of Zing 5 with support for an additional Linux distribution. Effective immediately, the Zing Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is now fully qualified on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.
But will anyone choose "Microsoft Linux" to run this on? We are sceptical. Some will, but not many. Several years ago SUSE got some major clients, but we don’t hear such stories anymore. █
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02.20.12
Posted in OpenSUSE at 10:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The “community” version of Microsoft Linux will have another release
OPENSUSE 12.2 is under development, still with the same leadership of the company that pays Microsoft for SUSE. Given that software patents are not legal in Europe for the time being, it would be foolish to support SUSE, but given this announcement as well as others, we are not too shocked to see some coverage, even from relatively Novell-hostile circles [1, 2, 3] (hopefully not warming up to SUSE). We have said this before and we ought to say it again: in order to prevent Microsoft from profiting from Linux we need to boycott SUSE. It’s toxic. █
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02.03.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE at 11:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell being emptied, then SUSE
Summary: Key people continue to leave SUSE and the distribution is left without a compelling sales pitch
THE brain drain at SUSE continues as many of the familiar names, not just Greg K-H, are leaving the Microsoft-funded SUSE. It’s funny that some of them will be serving SUSE’s competition, e.g. by maintaining a kernel from RHEL for 10 years.
None of this exodus should be surprising to people who have followed SUSE in recent years (as we have). The project lost momentum, it has become quiet, and Attachmate seems reluctant to invest much in it (more on Attachmate’s financial problems later). One of the executives of SUSE moves on to join other former SUSE executives:
ownCloud Inc., the commercial entity behind the popular open source file sync and share project, announced today that former SUSE executive and ownCloud co-founder Holger Dyroff, has joined the company as vice president, sales and marketing.
There are other SUSE people in there, as we showed in the past. And to quote a very recent article from CMS Wire:
ownCloud was formally founded last year, and in December the project announced that former SUSE and Novell executive, Markus Rex, would be joining the company as CEO and CTO.
Basically, SUSE has lost a lot of its leadership. Those who deny this would struggle to put together a counter-argument. Here at Techrights we faced the facts when Microsoft and Novell lied to the world about their patent deal and we still adhere to realism in this age of excessive PR and spin.
As Sean Michael Kerner put it the other day, one of the people behind OpenSUSE “Gives SUSE the Boot” and:
The move means that he’s leaving SUSE – that’s right kaput, no more SUSE for him.
He is one of the key people behind OpenSUSE’s formation, so all that’s left of the project is some tiny community and under-funded SUSE (partly funded by Microsoft). Here is an example of volunteer work:
I’ve been playing around a bit with SUSE Studio and I’ve created ‘moniz’, a openSUSE 12.1 based image with Cinnamon as default Desktop Environment. Currently it’s in a very Alpha state and it’s mainly the result of a series of tests to the functionality of SUSE Studio. I’m going to work more on this but locally using Kiwi.
OpenSUSE hopes to emulate the success of a two-men project, Linux Mint (maybe more than two people in practice). This is a sad testament to the weakness of OpenSUSE/SUSE, which was a leading distribution because Novell signed that treasonous deal with Microsoft. Not so long ago OpenSUSE suffered repeated downtimes and now it is getting new certificates, presumably for unrelated reasons.
“SUSE has become a mess that GNU/Linux does not need.”The other day we found in YouTube this new video which says: “Not all Open Source Software is free, and not all free software is open source. Open Sourcing Software can be done not just for community, but for security or integration. A sure way to make your software well documented is to provide the source code so that those integrating with your system can see the limitations in the code itself. SUSE Linux from Novell is one such product.”
Like we said before, SUSE is weird when it comes to access to code. Novell hides it or makes it hard to access. If one wants to fork “Microsoft Linux”, e.g. to make a taxless SUSE, there are technical barriers to it, imposed by Novell for years.
SUSE has become a mess that GNU/Linux does not need. Its main purpose now it to replace RHEL with Microsoft tax and more Microsoft APIs. █
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01.27.12
Posted in Dell, Mail, Microsoft, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 12:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft on track to global Linux tax?
Summary: Microsoft’s Linux internment and Microsoft Linux (SUSE) in the news; a little bit about GroupWise too
MICROSOFT has been creating its own internment pen for GNU/Linux users and it is looking to hire a mole to handle operations and lure some innocent sheep in.
As Microsoft boosters put it, Microsoft has Red Hat customers in sight. Microsoft already taxes Red Hat Linux (servers) at Amazon and now on its own turf it is trying to take this extortion further. Aiding Microsoft’s efforts we have had SUSE for a while, but fortunately Dell is moving away from that (although not to the right system, feeding Oracle instead). From a new page:
How Dell Migrated from SUSE Linux to Oracle Linux
Switching the underlying operating system on a single server is not trivial. Neither is dealing with the related conversion and compatibility issues. Imagine what’s involved in switching the operating system on thousands of servers spread globally across an enterprise, like Dell just did.
The good news here is that Dell itself won’t pay Microsoft tax (for its own systems), but at the same time Dell is actively promoting Microsoft-taxed Linux for OEMs solution, which troubles us a bit. It’s a signed deal which has the VAR Guy arguing about SUSE Studio:
Dell Servers Embrace SUSE Linux, But SUSE Studio Is Real Story
[...]
No doubt, Dell has relationships with multiple Linux distributions — including SUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Canonical Ubuntu. But SUSE apparently is the “first Linux vendor” in the Dell OEM Technology Partner program.
Sort of makes you wonder: Is something deeper brewing between Dell and SUSE? Hmmm…
This is just another reason to actually avoid Dell, but Joe Brockmeier, the former Novell employee, is promoting this. VAR Guy, who has also been close to Novell over the years, goes ahead and promotes GroupWise, which sane Web sites say nobody cares about anymore (and they are right). To quote:
No One Cares That Novell Has A New Version of GroupWise
Today Novell released its 2012 version of its email software GroupWise, and the announcement was greeted by most with a big yawn. GroupWise? Seems so last century. (Actually, the last updates to the software were for version 8 back in 2008-2010.) According to one analyst, “GroupWise has 10,000 customers and is used by 47 of the 50 US state governments.” It has been a distant third to Exchange and Lotus Notes for a while, and many GroupWise customers have switched over to Google Apps in the past several years.
GroupWise is proprietary and it distracts from Free/Open Source options that work equally well or better. GroupWise — like SUSE — is a solution in search of a problem, much like OpenSUSE when it looks for other people’s work again (trying to ape Linux Mint in this case). SUSE over the past 5+ years has been just a product for Microsoft to tax GNU/Linux through. It lacks technical merit/advantage and the latest release of OpenSUSE — as put in this new review — “was released too early. Period.” Boycott Novell and boycott SUSE. █
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