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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01.25.12
Posted in Dell, Microsoft, Novell, SLES/SLED at 10:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Microsoft has gotten Linux by the balls
Summary: How Dell is promoting Microsoft patent tax on GNU/Linux and how Tuxera makes Linux more Windows-like (with Microsoft’s limitations and patent tax, too)
DELL is said to be taking it up a notch with Microsoft Linux, shortly after another Dell and VMware announcement. This is troubling because Dell is promoting Microsoft tax on GNU/Linux by doing this.
Meanwhile, another taxer of Linux, Tuxera, brings out more Trojan horses:
Most distributions use the Tuxera community program for NTFS support; the driver in the Linux kernel has not been actively worked on for some time now. NTFS-3G and Ntfsprogs, originally separate projects, were combined last year.
Well, Tuxera in the kernel would be a problem for the same reason Novell was. What Novell did was put Microsoft hooks inside Linux, thus promoting the dependence of Linux on Microsoft (e.g. Hyper-V). Surely enough, the work of Novell will then be propagated to other vendors of Linux, so Microsoft uses companies like Novell and Tuxera to carry out Microsoft’s dirty work, in exchange for money. It’s about bringing Linux closer to the Microsoft environment, not Linux environments. █
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01.21.12
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A roundup of SUSE news and OpenSUSE in particular
SUSE is a project/product that Microsoft uses to tax GNU/Linux. It recently got a boost from a VMware/Dell deal, as we covered some days ago.
The “community” side of it shut down due to problems and later in protest (just the other day). It’s about SOPA. There is also ongoing maintenance:
It’s now the beginning of a new year (happy 2012 everybody!) and I’m writing about some changes that happened at the end of the last year and the period right after the openSUSE 12.1 release. Especially Coolo has used this to do a big cleaning up of our factory distribution touching most of openSUSE’s 4000+ source packages this way.
There are some new graphics from Andres [1, 2, 3] and packaging of new stuff, but then again we also find removals (discontinuing support for 32-bit Xen host in openSUSE12.1). The project is not as prominent as it used to be, so there is generally little activity there. The community manager will be at FOSDEM based on this post:
Oh, and yes, I plan to be at FOSDEM. And so should you – all your friends will be there!
Also about FOSDEM from another member of the project:
Our stand is going to be on the Ground Floor of Building K from 9am on Saturday 4th February till 6pm on Sunday 5th February
SUSE folks hope for Google funding:
I really hope most of the students will stay around and continue the amazing work they do if not openSUSE in FLOSS generally.
Michal Hrušecký writes about OpenStack in a few posts and also mentions MySQL in OpenSUSE. There is a new derivative of version 12.1 out and current usage of OpenSUSE is assessed by a member. Back in the old days (around SuSE 8.1, the distribution came with some neat Web development tools. Wolfgang writes about one of them:
I’m not a web designer really but I happen to be kind of responsible for packaging two web authoring applications in openSUSE which are SeaMonkey’s Composer and KompoZer. While the SeaMonkey integrated editor is somewhat limited (AFAIK) KompoZer (which was forked from Nvu at some point) has more advanced features. But KompoZer development seems to be pretty slow and it misses quite some of the new web stuff which is around nowadays. In addition the current version is BETA for quite some time now and seems to have a major issue in openSUSE 11.4 and 12.1.
last but not least, Novell is targeting Macs now, not GNU/Linux. To quote its latest announcement:
Novell Kanaka for Mac helps IT organizations eliminate manual work-arounds to integrate their Mac users. The plug-in uses native Mac* AFP protocol support making it the most comprehensive and advanced cross-platform server for mixed Windows*, Linux* and Mac clients.
Novell is not focused on what it said it would focus on. It’s just more proprietary software. So to those who wonder what happened to Novell, we’re keeping abreast and reporting. █
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01.19.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, SLES/SLED at 12:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Bench PR revisited
Summary: Timely reminder that analysts, journalists and PR agents are interchangeable and serve a similar function, including promotion of Microsoft Linux (SUSE)
SEVERAL weeks ago we noted that SUSE/Attachmate had hired a PR agency for some spin and intervention with the media.
Yesterday we saw an Attachmate employee publishing an article as though it’s unbiased journalism but we also found out that an IDG “journalist” relocated to the firm that services Attachmate. To quote:
BENCH PR has appointed Lisa Banks, ex IDG journalist, to work on the agency’s growing list of IT clients. She has been appointed to the position of senior consultant.
Banks was a journalist at IDG Communications until December 2011, writing for CIO, ComputerWorld and TechWorld. She will work from BENCH PR’s new Adelaide office.
Journalism and PR are similar industries in the sense that they usually sell influence and only pretend to be objective. IDG is an example of it because it gets bribed through advertising and IDC contracts.
SUSE coverage is in part artificial, resulting from pressure from PR agencies. We too get contacted by PR people sometimes, but we pay them no attention. As another new bit of background:
Attachmate plots new future for Novell
Attachmate Corp.’s purchase of Novell Inc. was finalized on April 27 of this year. Attachmate aimed to breathe new life into Novell’s franchises and assured partners and current users of Novell products that they would receive their continued support.
SUSE was separated structurally, but it still controlled by Attachmate and the Bench PR contact with Attachmate explicitly covers SUSE (we showed this before). Whenever reading about SUSE in the corporate press, bear in mind it’s possibly fake and paid for. █
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01.06.12
Posted in Microsoft, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 6:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft uses Azure to gain control over GNU/Linux, or at least the way it is deployed by those who need it
WHENEVER Microsoft becomes the loser, it then tries extremely hard to embrace (and extend) the winner. There are many examples of this throughout the recent history of computers (Java and the Web, to name just a couple).
OpenSUSE/SUSE is an example of Microsoft’s embrace of GNU/Linux — an embrace so detrimental that we called for a Novell boycott over 5 years ago. While there are harmless/benign elements in it, the most damaging element of this embrace and extend/control trick is patent tax. There are some other players that help Microsoft approach a position of control inside FOSS (this is a new press release). To quote, “OpenLogic aggregated data on customers purchasing support contracts from OpenLogic for each project, as well as projects that users deployed through OpenLogic CloudSwing, an open PaaS platform.”
OpenLogic is run by former Microsoft management, so its announcements should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps the biggest bit of Linux news as of late was another Microsoft “embrace” of Linux. SJVN is not really reporting what this means to GNU/Linux vendors and what Microsoft is trying to achieve here. Taxing Linux through Microsoft Azure might be the idea:
Here’s the reality: Microsoft is preparing to enable Linux to run on Windows Azure. But it doesn’t sound like Microsoft will officially offer “support” for Linux on Windows Azure. That’s where SUSE could potentially be an ideal Microsoft partner.
Microsoft and SUSE have a longstanding Windows-Linux integration relationship. Some conspiracy theorists in the open source market dismiss the Microsoft-SUSE relationship as harmful. But I think channel partners and CIOs have genuinely benefited from the Microsoft-SUSE work.
Microsoft might try to claim that SUSE “works best” with Windows and regardless of the distribution Microsoft will charge patent toll. Embrace and extend:
Despite the IT cognoscenti’s hankering to variously deride and dismiss Microsoft’s efforts into open source over the years, the company has (at times) produced some tangible advancements in the open computing arena – such as those seen during the Microsoft and Novell interoperability years, to name but one example.
That was a patent deal, allowing Microsoft to tax GNU/Linux indirectly, through Novell, which is dead now despite the continued Novelldemo uploads [1, 2]. SUSE is like a department of Microsoft now.
We can always hope that OpenSUSE volunteers will find other distributions to contribute to, but for the time being there are still volunteers there. Not many, but there it goes:
After the openSUSE 2011 Conference, we run a survey to gather feedback so that we can improve for the next conference. The overall feedback was very positive. Thanks a lot to the 134 people that participated in the survey!
134 people? That’s almost abysmal. SUSE loses in a major way and this must be bad news to Microsoft. SUSE is the last distribution that Microsoft has got left under its control. Let’s not give Microsoft the “embrace” it craves for the infamous “extinguish” phase. █
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12.26.11
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 5:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
More mass hypnosis
Summary: The industry of spin and lies is assigned the task of working on SUSE’s image
The “perception management” industry if contracted by Attachmate to take care of SUSE, which has had some problems recently.
OpenSUSE has been making some changes to the boot process, which led to problems that we covered recently, aside from security ones [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. The boosting of Novell’s SUSE in the news (e.g. in IDG [1, 2]) may be part of the PR campaign and the sole attempt of Attachmate to get involved is apparently this extended PR contract. To quote: “Public relations company Bench PR has extended its contract for The Attachmate Group now to include Attachmate, Novell, NetIQ and SUSE.” It is valuable to know that part of what we hear about SUSE is not organic; it is the fruits of people assigned to changing perceptions around SUSE. The next post will show how it’s sometimes done. █
“[A]fter analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.”
–“Over half your news is spin”
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11.29.11
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 3:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
From leader to loser in 5 years?
Summary: Why SUSE should be avoided, not just for helping Microsoft but also for technical reasons
FIVE years ago SUSE could almost be viewed as a victim of Novell’s decisions. But a few months ago SUSE sold out not via Novell and this is when we called for a boycott of SUSE and not Novell (which no longer existed per se).
Now that the Weekly News posts seem quite vacant (compared to years ago) we are left just seeing some OpenSUSE posts like impressions and various reviews. The score for OpenSUSE is not so high, so it is clearly not a leader. It arguably was the leader before Microsoft turned it into a ‘Microsoft Linux’. As one review summarised it: “I would say that it’s still a good distribution, but it’s not quite as awesome as version 11.4, so I would recommend it, but not as much as version 11.4.”
So it is arguably getting worse. People who speak about DistroWatch rankings for OpenSUSE conceal the fact that the recent release provides a temporary boost.█
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11.28.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 9:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Why SUSE lags behind the competition (in GNU/Linux) as indicated by news
NOVELL has become some historical entity whose news this month is mostly about an old case against Microsoft (here is a very recent video about that). We do not intend to cover this case because it is about the ‘old Novell’ of Noorda et al. It is not the same company that we boycott and the old case is only indirectly relevant to us.
So, Attachmate has this new release of OpenSUSE, which comes with a KDE side or a GNOME focus, depending on one’s preferences. The Fog Computing hype gets used for marketing as well, not just real features that are not mere buzzwords meaning “server”.
According to this, SUSE continues to work according to the plan we wrote about before:
Attachmate’s Suse division is also working on OpenStack software designed for ease of deployment in private clouds.
SUSE is not the best option though. For example, there is no SUSE support from AMD’s new chip:
As for operating system support, it’s helpful to note that the Opteron 6200 16-core chip is actually more like eight dual-core “Bulldozer” chips balled onto a single die. AMD says the 6200 supports all operating systems except Novell SLES 10 and 11,
How sad for Novell/SUSE, which is sponsored by Microsoft to help tax Linux (and still cannot beat RHEL and CentOS). They can’t even get fonts right. How come? Some font rendering features were historically disabled due to Apple and Microsoft patents.
In any event, it seems clear that there are no compelling reasons to give OpenSUSE any crown. It is the master of nothing and not a jack of any trades, either. It has Microsoft as its master. Nobody wants that, except perhaps close Microsoft partners like SAP. █
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