“Analysts sell out - that’s their business model…”

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: Novell is worried about an article which claims loss of interest in SUSE, so it goes to IDC's bundle of lies ("statistics" gathered the wrong way)

YESTERDAY we mentioned an article where Freelock Computing was quoted as saying that interest in Novell's SUSE seemingly decreased. The argument was mostly anecdotal, but it concurred with and corroborated other stories that we had accumulated and Novell can only attempt to rebut based on IDC numbers, which Novell is sometimes paying for [1, 2]. Novell's PR team is throwing some numbers out there -- numbers which can be interpreted in different ways depending on intent. As the SUSE saying goes, "Have a lot of fud!"

On the other hand, Ballnux has just been selected by NCR for point of sale devices. This is one area where SUSE or SLERT [1, 2], for instance, is not doing too badly.

NCR announced two compact POS (point of sale) devices that run SUSE Linux for Point of Service, as well as a number of Windows operating systems. The RealPOS 40 and RealPOS 60 use Intel Atom and Celeron processors, respectively, offer enhanced energy efficiency, and provide both four powered serial ports and up to eight powered USB ports, the company says.

These POS devices come with Microsoft tax, paid so kindly by Novell for invisible patents that are not even known. Many of Microsoft's patents are utter junk, such as these absurd patents:

One of the great invention is done by Microsoft is patent on PageUp and PageDown System. http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/20193-microsoft-granted-page-up-page-down-patent Even they have patent on StartButton, AddressBar and many Other stuff.

A loss for SUSE when it is a gain for another GNU/Linux distribution is always good news (Red Hat has a real-time operating system, a desktop one, and a server one too, just like Novell). The fact that Novell felt compelled to address an article about SUSE's share speaks volumes about Novell's paranoia (if they did not worry, they would simply ignore this new report and abstain from giving it more attention). ⬆