[KLUG Advocacy] Novell 'openning' SuSe

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> It actually sounds like a pretty nice setup depending on how they
> roll it out.  Sounds like they will keep a little more control than
> Fedora while still getting the benefits of many minds...

I hope so.  But I'm a bit skeptical;  while being a big booster of Open
Source I do think there are some issues that a 'Community' really
struggles with due to the issue of took-many-cooks and poor
prioritization unless you have a very strong couple of leaders - and
those leaders are rare.  Notice that many of the best Open Source
applications were derived from commercial applications that went Open
Source - Open Office, Open Groupware, JIVE messanger, etc...  It has
taken years and years for Abiword/Gnumeric to almost match up against
owriter, and ocalc, and there still is no contender against oimpress.
The various Jabber/XMPP servers are a mess with the exceptions of
ejabberd and JIVE (a formerly commercial product).  And don't even get
me started on the state of Open Source groupware servers and the myriad
of wild angles I've seen them take off in - they are probably the best
example of the 'way too many cooks' effect.

A distro must above all things be stable - not just in the technical
sense but in how things work and how services are provided.  This is why
I ran screaming away from Fedora after a couple of versions.

> I recently loaded SuSE 9.3.  It is pretty nice.  The desktop is
> definately geared toward getting users comfortable with the Linux
> desktop environment.  I think they went a little overboard in a few
> areas but for the most part it is pretty nice.  

Agree.  There is no perfection, but SuSe 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 all operate
very much the same and are binary compatible with each other.

> The one thing that I noticed so far with SuSE in general, and SuSE
> since Novell in particular is that there seems to be a bit more QA
> and things tend to work better without glitches "out of the box".  

Yep.

> am happy to see that the DVD iso is available for download for free. 
> They list it as eval but that simply means that there is no support. 
> Same with Novell Desktop (which I want to load a box up with the
> newest version of that).  

I tried an early version of NLD and it was basically a stripped down
version of Pro, but things have probably improved.

> I think, depending on how implementation continues, that between
> Apple and Linux Microsoft is vulnerable for loosing a fair amount of
> market share.  

I think they are loosing that market share.

> It will take a long time to really make major inroads
> but it is possible that they will not be the only choice.

I doubt it will ever happen in the USA, but there are more people
elsewhere anyway.

>   I am
> hoping that Apple ships their Intel solution so you can dual boot
> between Windows and OS X (and hopefully Linux).  I would LOVE a box
> that I could run all three OSes on!!!! I would be in geek heaven!  

What I've seen makes me think that will be the case.  So long as you
have an Apple/Intel box.  OS/X will have embedded DRM that will prevent
it running on a 'white box'.  Personally I suspect Apple will ultimately
loose out by doing this;  people will dual-boot, spend more and more
time in XP since that is where those critical apps are (or those stupid
games), and eventually just replace the iOS/X box with an XP only box
because it is cheaper.  Longhorn will bring many of the "innovations"*
of the OS/X UI to Windows.   So in the end I think Apple and LINUX will
hurt Microsoft, but Microsoft and LINUX will be the survivors.

* Which really aren't innovations at all - but try explaining true UI
history to an Apple nut.  What they've done is a excellent packaging
job,  which is certainly very commendable in its own right.  It took
GNOME years to get to the point where things didn't radically change
with each new version (adding more weight to my initial point).

> Hmmm then I guess that maybe even one could run OS X in a VMWare
> session maybe??? I wonder if, once OS X is on the Intel hardware, if
> VMWare could or would port their product to OS X?  

If VMware emulates Apple's weird little chipset you should be able to
run OS/X in a VM.  I'd be suprised if VMware didn't port their product
to iOS/X.