Alright I know this is going to sound very hostile but please hear me out:
I have used many distros in the past, Mepis, Debian, Mandriva, Ubuntu and a few others.
One of my first distros that I tried though was Suse 9.1 and well…
It sucked, dependency hell seemed to be a common occurrence and Iii could not get it to work to where I wanted it.
Now time has passed and I have come to look at open suse but there is one thing I question greatly.
The IP deal between Novell and Microsoft, after that happened I never wanted anything to do with microsoft ever again or suse for that matter.
I dont respect Microsofts IP claims over linux, to say that linux stole ideas from microsoft is just plain ludicrous.
I mean yes there are similarities in the interface but come on a lot of operating systems have similar interfaces!
Look its not Open Suse I have an issue with, I am sure things have improved in Open Suse since I used it.
Its Novell I am questioning, especially their little adverts saying only their commercial software has security and nonsense like that
(see here)](http://alexvalentine.org/?p=594)
It was that very page that made me VERY wary of Novell, I saw the original page for it too and I was quite disturbed.
After this can you blame my position?
Look I am sure Open Suse is a great distro for those who use it, I recognize its a community based distro but I question the company that spawned it.
At least with canonical the company behind Ubuntu I get, but I am very unsure about Novell.
(Just use it and see if it fits your needs; nobody but you knows them better, so there’s no one who could offer you a tool for a need they know nothing about.)
Well I am not questioning Suse will suit my needs, I am sure it will as does mot of the other linuxes I have tried.
This is more of a morality issue I guess, I really dislike Microsoft and its policies.
From what I know so far Novell has done nothing to harm linux yet but the future is always uncertain, I mean at first SCO didnt seem to want to do anything to linux and look at what it did…
Leave the politics. Just use the sw! Unsure about morality - just use only-gpl sw! Though I’m not sure what’s you point. It sounds more like a philosophy question than an every-day-computing.
Well its no question I do mix proprietary software with open source, I use flash instead of Gnash and wine to emulate windows apps.
I still use MS office but only because of work.
But as it stands I tried to distance myself as far from microsoft as possible, office and IE are my only real ties to microsoft right now.
And yes this is a post about philosophy, more then a tech issue as I am trying my best to use more open source and free myself from MS.
I dont object to using non GPL software, heck I use opera a good percent of the time.
I am just getting a second opinion, I like using linux and open source but I know there are many in the community who disapprove of the MS Novell deal.
It works… It works well… Good support and a good community. Maintained well with bleeding edge packages available if you want them. I’ve been using SUSE since SuSE-7something and there have been ups and downs but it’s always moving forward. Some may not like the Microsoft deal and I’m not thrilled about it either. But I take the view that a “partner”/licensee would have a better shot at integrating the 2 platforms…
And you can always remove the “offending” software or install a different distro if you don’t like it, they’re all Linux on the inside.
The ppl who work for microsoft and Novell and Canonical and so on … they have to live in a real world, in the sense of having to send their children to school and feed and clothe their families. So I don’t begrudge them or their employers trying to make a dollar from their efforts.
I find Microsoft distasteful in their methods, and would like in an ideal world to boycott them, but I don’t - I still have XP on my desktop.
But put this in perspective - there are other, perhaps more significant battles to fight (and incidentally, if there’s one thing that has redeemed Microsoft in my estimation it’s the work the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have done to combat malaria - something most drug companies see as unprofitable, and therefore pointless).
The way I see it is that Linux has close to zero install cost for a home user - you can hop and skip to a new distro in two hours.
The first time Novell actually start helping MS abuse patent law to bully someone out of the market, I’ll drop them instantly - as I suspect will most other users. They aren’t stupid enough, I sincerely doubt, to do this.
Unless and until then, it’s a nice distro - and some form of integration, cooperation and interoperability between the two platforms can only benefit linux, and open source, in the long term, if we believe that it is a genuinely superior paradigm that only needs to break a barrier in terms of exposure to truly flourish.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. >:)
Well I just think its great that some big companies are finally starting to get involved in the open source community. Especially Microsoft, who has committed many software sins in the past. For way too long, the software community has been in a silly state of us and them, and its about time that we all realize the somewhat disturbing truth… There is no them, its only us. Welcome to the community Bill Gates, Microsoft, Novell.
I’ve only been running Suse for a month. It’s the best distro I’ve used, and I’ve tried all of the Top 10 found on Distrowatch as well as many others. I too had similar doubts about Novell at one time. I took me a long time to work through it.
I think I’ve came to realize that the agreement between Microsoft and Novell is a business agreement. It’s not evil. It hasn’t changed Linux one bit. It really doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.It’s sort of like two nations signing an agreement when both side knows they will only keep the agreement as long as it benefits them both. The second it doesn’t, look out.
Besides that, Microsoft nor Linux is going away. It behooves both sides to work together. There is a place for both platforms. Just use what works best for you.
…BTW, I dual boot with Vista. It’s not bad at all.
Political? Try this: FAQ:Novell-MS (As oldcpu suggested earlier, in case you missed it)
In a nutshell, the agreement just means better interoperability. I asked Chris Bartlett from Microsoft, Reading, UK about the deal; he was very open and just said that it’s about better interoperability.
Well I’ve tried several distributions and for most systems I love openSUSE. It’s the fantastic documentation and forum support that are the best thing as linux can be tricky for people new to it. It has a lovely and simple graphical installer yet it is still slick and full of options to configure as you will. It works very well-very stable. Recently I tried Ubuntu which is a good distribution also but I wanted to update version and because it was an extremely old version it needed to do it in 3 stages. Some of the repositories had disappeared and it was going to be a pain to do without burning a cd-rom. I had no blank cd’s left. I tried researching how to install Ubuntu over the internet without a cd-rom or floppy disc but due to the volume of articles out there couldn’t find the way. I searched for how to do it on openSUSE and found out how pretty much instantly. The documentation and support is definitely best.
Subjectively I find that openSUSE branding is by far the most attractive of all the distributions and the gecko always makes me smile. It’s very slick.
Vector linux is really good if you have seriously old hardware because it is designed to be a very cut down/low resorce using version of linux so I use that for old ancient pc’s.
openSUSE definitely best though.
I think I’ve come to realize that the agreement between Microsoft and Novell is a business agreement. It’s not evil. It hasn’t changed Linux one bit. It really doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.It’s sort of like two nations signing an agreement when both side knows they will only keep the agreement as long as it benefits them both. The second it doesn’t, look out.
We all use linux and all a distro does is package things differently and supply a different set of admin or other tools.
Choose whatever distro suits you best or you feel the most comfortable with - I have tried most through the years but have always liked suse/redhat.
As far as ‘deals’ with M$, Novell have always had interoperability with M$ through Netware, even before they took over the original SuSe. I should imagine that the other big player in the US also has deals with them (Redhat).
What started it all was M$ stating that they would persocute(prosecute-:)) people on a persoanl level for using software that they had not licensed.
It’s a real world and we all have to live together. Linux isn’t owned by one company with a monopoly, but we live with M$. (If you want windows, M$ is the only game. If you want linux, take your choice.)
At the end of the day, distro choice is down to which one you like and which one gives the most ease of use.
The same as shareware/donations - if you use it, pay the guy something so he can live.
