Linux.com

this article is a troll.

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Please explain your comment.

I found the article interesting (I'm a SuSE user). I don't know if I agree with all the analysis but that hardly makes it a troll.

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Please explain your comment.

I found the article interesting (I'm a SuSE user).

Duh
Do you even know what a troll is? Are you familiar with the term flame war? People that start them are trolls by and large. This guy has made a great attempt to start one. So what was your comment again? RedHat bashing seems to be getting almost as popular as M$ bashing in some circles. While I certainly do not pretent to understand some of the dicisions they have made over the years that hardly drops them to the bottom of the pile in my eyes (or the eyes of many others judging by the premise of this article and any honest look at markey share).

Pissing matches of this type do no good. Period.

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"Do you even know what a troll is?"

Yes , but you dont<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

"Are you familiar with the term flame war?"

Again yes , and again you are misleading yourself into a false identification of what is
a flamewar<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

Go read what is what and try and remember it or simply just dont post your a waste of time , bandwidth and hard drive space :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

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No, you are a troll

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I agree<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... a troll indeed

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Novell now has the tools and the resources it needs not only to kick Redhat's crown but also to challange M$ in the desktop arena. all it needs is good marketing.that's my opinion.

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all it needs is good marketing.that's my opinion.

that is obviously being worked on as you can look at all the Red Hat slander that has appeared out of nowhere since Novells aquisistion. These guys are pumping out ads like crazy. look at thier stock price. Nearly as high as Red Hats and they have done ZERO so far. all Novell has done is talk. When they start releaseing eDirectory and EVERYTHING open souce like red hat does THEN they will have done something. Till then it is all cheer leading. Red Hat has been in this game 10 years they maintain a TON of apps that go into EVERY distro. What has Novell done to warrent being treated better? Red Hat may change its business model but thats nothing like the vender lockins (eDir) Novell will soon attempt.

Becarefull who you want to be dominant. One has proven to be a good leader, the other known for locking in its customers.

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Although I disagree with the impressions of Red Hat's administration tools, they're not unique in part because Red Hat makes them freely available, source and all, for anyone to use in other distributions. SUSE doesn't do that with YAST. As for the apt-get/.deb propaganda, RPM isn't comparable because it doesn't do the same thing. It manages packages, period. If you want the automatic dependency fulfillment and seemless downloading abilities, check out up2date in Fedora Core 1 (better yet, what'll be in 2).

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While I have no problem with RPM packages (I'm more comfortable with them the<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.DEBs) up2date is barely URPMI two years late. To compare it's functionality to apt/apt-get is just silly.

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Apt-get works in Fedora. Yum also works well.

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I don't think so. Anyway what's wrong with yum or apt-get. And how many third party repositories exist for SuSE anyway? I haven't seen any.

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ummm, dude, 2 things

1) Dependancy hell with up2date

2) up2date breaks things....badly. I had to totally rebuild a mail server to learn my lesson, but damn did I learn it. (psst that's why I use Gentoo now)

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Dependency hell? You have dependency hell with any distro.

up2date breaks things if you operate outside of the RPM database or badly package or use odd packages. That is true of any such tool. Play with fire? You will eventually be burned. If something blew up in production and you did not stage, don't blame to tool: *you* screwed up.

Also... RHN is much more than updates. apt-get and yum can also be configured (very easily BTW) to work on Red Hat and works on Fedora by default

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Get with the times apt4rpm is available. It works on Red Hat and Fedora. BTW, Yum is also available for use with Fedora. UP2DATE has been for a long time no the only option. You can also follow stable, testing and unstable like in Debian.

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I've been a Red Hat user since version 8 came out, and automatically upgraded to 9 when it was released. I went shopping for a new distro when RH sent me an email detailing the EOL for Red Hat Linux 9. When I started looking at Suse 9, I was floored at how easy it was to configure. RH's configuration tools are so scattered and confusing that I never used them, instead opting for pulling up a text editor and changing the raw<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/etc files.

Suse's Yast tool is well worth the price of the distro, IMHO. It makes setting up hardware and services simple, and straightforward. I still edit<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/etc files now and then, but nowhere near as often with Suse as with Red Hat.

As for "Fedora", I, too, object to them using the name of another Open Source group that was around before them. It's nice to think you're so big you can trample on the rights of others! Red Hat has all but said that Fedora Core is a permanent beta used by "hobbyists" for the benefit of their paying Enterprise customers. If I hadn't found Suse, I would have been tempted to try White Box Linux (which is based on the RHEL source code). If I wanted an operating system that was in permanent beta, I'd stick with Windows!

Oh, one other thing. Red Hat Linux doesn't recognize all of my hardware (e.g., Promise raid drive, and LCD monitor), while Suse 9 does without problems or complaints. It even installed the correct drivers for my nVidia card without my doing anything.

I can't see myself ever going back to Red Hat. It's not good enough, doesn't meet my needs, and has a lousy attitude towards the Open Source community, in my opinion.

Oh, and it's not Trolling to tell it like it is!

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(1) The nVidia drivers are closed source. Distributing them without opening the source actually hurts rather than helps the open source community. Thus, in this regard, SuSE is hurting the community. Red Hat distributes open source nVidia drivers. While these aren't the same quality, they can be debugged and improved.

(2) YaST is also closed source, proprietary software. Red Hat's configuration tools are open source. You can go ahead and gamble on YaST, but just realize that the reason Linux is getting hotter and the other Unices are not doesn't have anything to do with Linus' intellect. The open source development method of the Linux kernel makes it superior in many ways, and it continually improves at a faster rate. I'll gamble on any company that puts its trust into it 100%.

Which distribution has a lousy attitude towards the Open Source community? One that actively tries to engage the developers in the project, or one that releases closed source binaries and utilities?

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Everything you say about SuSE is true, but reflects what SuSE did before Novell took over. What exactly Novell does with SuSE remains to be seen.

I personally have high hopes that Novell will change SuSE for the better.

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Novell didn't have a clue when they originally bought Unix, and I don't think they're any better today with Linux.

After they fail by doing something really stupid to Suse, they'll probably sell whatever remains of it to SCO.

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Same name? YES, same company? NOT at all.. If you haven't noticed Novell has spent the past few years cleaning house. Long gone are the days when the technical folks in Provo drive the decisions, where "it wasn't invented here so it can't be any good" prevails. No more making product decisions on what is kewl and then the marketing folks try to figure out how to sell it. Gone are the days of clueless management teams that no nothing of boardroom manners and business needs.

Novell is finally listening... and delivering.. No I'm not an employee.. just a long time supporter.

ROCK ON NOVELL, give us what we are all looking for and needing. A strong viable alternative that scales, is supported and works!!

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As much as I like the Open Source movement, and want it to succeed, I hate listening to the zealots out there who insist that proprietary code is a crime against humanity. This socialist nonsense is getting real old real fast.

As I said on a previous occasion, at the end of the day, it just has to work. Making me jump through hoops to get my nVidia card to work, for example, just to please someone else's ideals, is just plain wrong! Linux developers can make better drivers? Good, let them prove it!

If someone wants to build a for-sale distro that has one or two proprietary pieces that I need to make my life easier, something I am willing to pay for, then this is a good thing!

I want choices! Open Source gives me that choice, but I absolutely refuse to "toe the line" when zealots say I should be a purist. I refuse to live my life by someone else's standards. I insist on using the best combination of software for my needs. Until someone in the Open Source community comes up with a satisfactory replacement (i.e., one that works just as well or better than the proprietary) for the nVidia drivers and the Yast utilities of the world, then I will continue to use what works. It's called competition, and it's the reason Linux is so hot right now, not the bluster of proprietary-is-evil proponents.

Besides, isn't silencing the competition, instead of meeting it fair and square in the marketplace, something companies like Microsoft and SCO do?

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The reason the open source community hasn't come up with a good replacement for the nvidia drivers is that the interface is proprietary, and open source developers can't get the info they need to develop a good driver. By keeping things proprietary nvidia is able to limit competition. That's one reason for the "proprietary-is-evil" viewpoint.

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Does SuSE have a free version like fedora? Do they support a free as in "free beer" version that is supported through third party and community repositories?

Does SuSE have an IRC channel that normally has over three hundred community members connected offering instant support?

Didn't the name "fedora" precede Redhat's involvement with this community supported project?

Doesn't training staff to rely on proprietary Linux tools lock you into a distro? Ever hear of <A HREF="http://www.webmin.com/" TITLE="webmin.com">webmin</a webmin.com>?

Telling it like it is.

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Does SuSE have a free version like fedora?

Yes - check out the web site - via ftp!!!

No idea about IRC - i don't need it i just use thier online knowledgebase instead!

Webmin - included as standard with SuSE so you get the choice!!

Enjoy!

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Redhat has a poor attitude towards opensource???? Uh yeah right! OK Redhat employs a lot of top kernel hackers, they release the source to all their products! RedHat is 100% opensource, sure they charge for support, but think of it this way, they fund Fedora, they support OSDL, they sponser a number of different opensource products. OK If you want examples of what they do for opensource:

- Fedora Core 1.
- Release of all their source code including:

    Anaconda, their configuration tools, eCos, etc
There is nothing wrong with Redhat, there is nothing wrong with their product, I have always found RH easy to deploy and zero hassle, and the myth about RPM being crap is another issue, take apt away from Debian and just use DPKG you will have the same problem you have with RPM. Fedora have three automatic packaging systems include: apt, yum and up2date, not to mention that nearly every major distro uses RPM! So Please do not troll a company that has done more for opensource than a lot of others!

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Like most of these other guys I agree....suse is not open source friendly as it should be. Hopefully Novell will change that.

HOWEVER. part of the reason many people have a problem with Redhat is they are....well, they've been called on many occasions the "Microsoft of Linux" and after having used it from 6.1 (not counting test runs going back as far as version 3) until version 8 I will NEVER go back to Redhat. Ending support for a free version (regardless if you have 40 machines on RHN) is just wrong. They were getting their money out of my arse and that biz model obviously worked.

Needless to say, I had no problems turning my back on Redhat, and it will never find it's way back into my data center.

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"Like most of these other guys I agree....suse is not open source friendly as it should be. Hopefully Novell will change that."

You're stupid or what? novell will never change that.. They probably think (as the writer of this article) that yast is good , suse is good as it is , and they'll never change that.

RedHat , on the other hand , is doing what is right. They bought a company called Cistina and all the technology from Cistina that is added to RHL or FC will be GPLed<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... Do you think that suse will ever do that?

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Like most of these other guys I agree....suse is not open source friendly as it should be. Hopefully Novell will change that.


Hope is all you have, Thier V.P. already said they will rethink thier products availibilty on Red Hat machines, so not only is it not open source, its a vender lockin against competition. and you think this company is going to change suse for the better? the plans are to change it for the worse!
Novell has to change everything they think of business. why do you think red hat has been #1 so long? being #1 in linux is VERY, VERY hard because the community HATES #1 but red hat survives because they do so much for us nobody else has matched them. Debian does good work as does gentoo but they do not have the money to fund so many projects or just buy a company outright then relese the code as GPL. Personally I think Red Hat is one of the best companys out there for anything. They donate so much they should be labeled a charity orginization.

Where did Debian get the anaconda port?
Where did Knoppix get hardware detection?
Where did Mandrake come from?
Where did Debian get exec-shield from?
How did the 2.6 kernel get NPTL taking threading from 2,000 threads to 50,000 threads?
Where do these distros get GCC from?
Who wrote cygwin?

This is how Red Hat survives by giving back otherwise the "redhat is M$" would run rampant
killing off the single largest employer of full time OSS developers.

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Fedora's Warren Togami suggested the idea. The project and Red Hat's consumer line merged. Red Hat didn't "steal the name" etc. I.e., the projected changed direction.

/me is tired of hearing this FUD.

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"As for "Fedora", I, too, object to them using the name of another Open Source group that was around before them. It's nice to think you're so big you can trample on the rights of others! "

Ever visited the fedora.us or fedora.redhat.com websites? they all show how things are. The Fedora project merged with RedHat.
One of the major proofs is that one of the members of fedora.us is now at redhat...

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I personally admire Redhat because they have stayed true to the Free/Open source ideals. That is why I have never tried Suse. If I wanted proprietary software, I would use Windows.

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Agreed,

Where did this Redhat bashing come from !

First of all ! I'm a Fedora core 1 user (again) after having returned from my latest mandrake experience which i converted to from SUSE.

I've been through most of them lately and for some reason the only one that allows me to "just-work" is actually Redhat. And this is even though i'm a KDE follower !

I have nothing against SUSE at all (in fact i admire their newest Standard Server 8 which i think is amazing)

Yes there are problems with Redhat ! They do not include any "advanced/simple" automounting for devices and no they do not handle laptops plugging in and out very well either (why not use ifplugd like on mandrake).
And yes we'll have to install closed source binaries and "questionable" applications on our own ?

Contrary to SuSE or SUSE - redhat have stuck to the open source model and released all improvements and application while SUSE's YAST is still closed. One good reason for supporting Redhat (even though they love Gnome)<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-)

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We bought a copy of Suse 9.0 Professional at my company with the mindset of possibly using it instead of redhat on some of our x terminal servers.

I loaded it on my laptop so I could get familiar with it, and after 3 days of trying to get used to SuSE I finally had enough. I reloaded My laptop with Fedora Core 1 and I quickly tossed SuSE on the shelf to get dusty and eventually tossed out.

Is it just me or Does the Yast system configuration tool suck big time.

I'm no slouch when it comes to using different distributions of Linux my personal favorites are Libranet, Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora for my personal systems.

For a Server nothing beats Red hat or Fedora Core if the system is properly configured.

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Is it just me or Does the Yast system configuration tool suck big time.


It's you

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yep - its you. I'm techno challenged on got SuSe 9 and Yast working in pretty short order

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It's you.

I'm not tech minded, yet SuSE and YaST work very well for me.

And, this coming from an ex-Windows user. So, I can't see how a die-hard Linux user had problems.

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I have to agree with the other comments - YAST is an excellent tool and SUSE Server/Enterprise is proven in my institution to perform better than RehHat in tests. I'm not saying RH is rubbish, but our university have switched 99% of our Linux servers to SUSE as the support is better and YAST is such a powerful and easy to use tool (especially as you can use it flawlessly over ssh). While many of us do understand how to manually configure things, there's no need half the time and YAST makes config changes much quicker as we don't have to search through huge config files, just load YAST and in three button presses most things can be set up/changed.

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If you really need to scroll through all the config files , you really dont know what you have to do... that's why you need a stupid interface to do your job...

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thats the thing, you are windows user. the switch from windows to suse is the best way into linux, but also into bad decision. you will never learn how, a linux/unix machine is really configured. just get a vi and you can configure most other unix systems too. i started with redhat about 8 years ago, then i had do an admin job with Digital unix, later on Tru64 and Sun Solaris. no problem at all.
i am now working with fedora core on my laptop and Redhat Advanced workstation (need it at work) and i can just say its cool. fedore and redhat rocks. the can take a usage of each other. fedora gets great kernel and application deveolpment. redhat gets the fayt way forwards from fedora, for their future Enterprise products.

so dont argue with dumb arguments, and dont tell so muc hshit about redhat when you have no idea, of what you are writing.

greetings from austria (not only us is using redhat:) )
btw, suse has a good market in germany, and thats all<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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I'll tell you why RedHat is number one. Because they support the community. Their software stack end to end is Open Source (They have third party proprietary software that runs on them but all of their products are OSS or eventualy become so). Unlike Novell's strategy of giving away the client only to lock you in with their proprietary server components like NDS and their upcoming iFolder server. RedHat wants to compete on open standards and software by only using things like LDAP. Obiously customers like the way RedHat does business and are saying so with their dollars. Fedora was an opening up of RedHat to the community. They may have failed to communicate that but rest assured that RedHat developers have deadlines based on Fedora. I realy don't understand the anamosity when RedHat is still more open than Novell. As for an end to end product line I wouldn't be supprised if we see a more complete solution from RedHat soon. I forsee healthy competition from RedHat, Novell and perhaps even UserLinux in the future. RedHat made the Enterprise Linux market without having to resort to proprietary software in order to distinguish themselves. They are here to stay.

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That's why they did an End-of-Life on Red Hat Linux, and replaced it with something "for hobbyists". Red Hat Linux served a need in the community that required something a little more stable than something "for hobbyists".

I think Red Hat has lost touch with the community, and I think Suse will be next, under Novell. Finally, Mandrake will have to follow suit to get out from under bankruptcy.

The community is screwed, people!

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Fedora is for hobbyists, yes but it also plays well in the enterprise for less critical machines or development machines. And is free as in "free beer"

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Initially I was very upset at RH. However it seems like the Fedora schedule is going to be about the same as the old RH schedule. And I have not noticed any difference in quality. This in spite of the constant whining by some people that it is "full of bugs". The real question going forward is how long will it be supported. This will be the telling question on the quality of the community around it. RH will not prevent it from being supported by the community or 3rd parties. If the demand is there my guess is so will support. Someone must think 5$ per machine per month is enough money to make for porting patches. In fact I read a story somewhere that quoted some RH guy saying that they were making money with their 5$ a month deal but they did not want to go that way. I have to admit that made no sense to me but that was their decision and they will live with it.

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how long will it be supported? check this out.

http://www.fedoralegacy.org

cool, huh? and redhat is supporting it (with resources) too. i thing rh gets a bad rap, and i'm glad to see some folks defending them.

i also think fedora was a foresightful thing to do, very much in line with the spirit of oss, and will turn out to be a good decission on rh's part for everyone concerned, including the community.

rh has their heart in the right place. you shouldn't blame them for also wanting to do what the purpose of forming a company is to do, which is make a profit.

it's all good people. you whiners understand oss *far* less than rh, if you think engaging the community in development thru something like fedora and throwing resources and q/a at it is a bad thing.

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they support the community.

So do SuSE - check thier support for KDE, wine, and many others. They pay a lot of developers to work on these projects. Now that's what I call supporting the community.

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RedHat also hires a lot of OSS developers. SuSE forever has had Yast as a proprietary app. They had forever not given away their full distro. ISO's were forever non-existant and yet SuSE is praised just because it isn't the number one distro in the US. That is not to say that it isn't a great distro even with Novell tacking on even more of a proprietary stack. My point is that RedHat often gets the short end of the stick when they make a move just because they are the most visible Linux distro. It is a bit of hipocracy. People start looking at number two just because it is anything but number one. RedHat takes so much flack and yet they dedicate their buisness to a belief in a 100% free software stack (and yes their per seat RHAS licensing, which SuSE has had way before RedHat is inline with the GPL). What is cool is that RedHat decided to make their distro open to developers outside of RedHat. Traditionaly any improvments would have to be made upstream or the Distro would be forked (ala Mandrake). Now with Fedora they have a community project which they base their Enterprise products off of. It is totaly free and you can find support from many smaller OSS companies. So if you were to put up a chart of communtiy support you would see RedHat way in the lead of of SuSE. Like I said at the end of my first post I expect to see healthy competition between RedHat, SuSE and perhaps UserLinux. It is just wierd seeing people take pleasure in throwing FUD twords a distribution that supports the community so much but I guess people just like throwing mud at the frontrunner.

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While I admire Redhat's ability to make money and stay true to it's open source roots, I think SuSe is a much easier to administer system. I can't help but add that with Novell's sales channels, SuSe stands to profit immensly from their relationship. That's a big advantage for Suse.

I'm also a big fan of Mandrakes tools, if the new changes to their development process can create a more stable distro, they will have my money. Mandrake is also true to open source, all of their tools are GPL. And urpmi rocks! There is enough profit to be had by all if we can start erroding the market share of the 800 lb. gorilla in Redmond. It's looking like a bright future for linux users all around.

Now if only Darl Mc Bride were to be arrested on securities fraud, things would be perfect.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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I'll buy your arguments. Red Hat is making the right moves now for an enterprise play, but if Novell stays the course, Novell/SuSE is going to be hard to beat in big business deployments.

Steven

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apt-rpm is available for a long time for Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core. Now knowing about it makes the author of this article even less qualified.

Spend much more time at Google and become familiar with a distribution and its community before you try to push your own favourite distributor.

Btw, the sheer number of available packages for a distribution doesn't say a word about the average quality of the packages. Quantity != quality.

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Simple. That is why MS is popular in America too.

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Novell bought SUSE and Novell is an American company.

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While there are many things incorrect in this article there's one I want to address.

> Though why they picked the name of an existing open source project is another mystery.

Next time you write about something please do even a cursory amount of research before writing. It's well known why the Red Hat Linux Project (RHLP), as it was originally named, made the change to Fedora. It's because of the fedora.us project and RHLP merged.

I have a strong dislike of people who have to blast and bad-mouth something in order to feel good. Just about every point or "fact" mentioned in this article is half-baked at best and completely wrong at worst.

I think that SUSE is a great distro and the merger with Novell is really going to be a good thing for Linux and Open Source. But there is no reason to spread FUD and disinformation about Red Hat. Try writing about the facts in an objective way instead of picking up the poison pen in order to get personal thrills.

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"Next time you write about something please do even a cursory amount of research before writing. It's well known why the Red Hat Linux Project (RHLP), as it was originally named, made the change to Fedora. It's because of the fedora.us project and RHLP merged."

Ahem. The Fedora in question was a digital
repostitory system for libraries developed
at a couple of universities starting in 1998.
Click on the link provided, and find more
information on what they are talking about.
Amazing how that works, isn't it? Next time
you write about something please do even a
cursory amount of research before writing.

j

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Just to add flavour to the topic. You might want to look at this article<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:

<A HREF="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1417208&mode=thread&tid=51" TITLE="newsforge.com">http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1417<nobr>2<wbr></nobr> 08&mode=thread&tid=51</a newsforge.com>

The issue is that RedHat did not name the project Fedora. There already was a project called Fedora Linux in existance at the time. I dont really think RedHat is using its weight ( as the mistaken author seems to be confused about ) to subdue any other project.

Had they beem, a cease and Desist would have been in place a long time back.

Anyway, I dont think the Name issue causes me much concern. Look at the FireBird issue.... I use both of them<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. Mozilla Firebird as well as FireBird dbms.

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> Ahem. The Fedora in question was a digital
repostitory system for libraries
> developed
at a couple of universities starting in 1998.

Yes. That's true. But the fedora.us project had been in existance for a while as well and, when it and the RHLP joined they decided to keep the name Fedora. So, you see, they didn't name the Fedora project after the digital repostitory system. It's just like Firebird.

Besides, this was just one little minor point in a long list of falacies and outright BS in that article anyway.

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RedHat is/was number one because you could download it for FREE and/or load it on as many systems as you wanted.

I think both RedHat and SUSE are in trouble now that they want an arm and a leg for their versions. They decided to cater to the "enterprise" crowd and more power to them, but the most popular are going to be the freebies. They might not be as polished and they may have a few bugs, but the Linux hardcore don't want support....at least not at the prices Novel and RH are charging.

Support? Support?! We don need no stinkin' support!

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Support? Support?! We don need no stinkin' support!

Then use fedora<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... it's free as in "free beer" and "free speech" and supported with security patches and third party repositories<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... and if you want EOL support move up to their commercial distro.

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You can also load SUSE on as many systems as you like, and according to emails we sent from the University to them it is legal to copy it between pupils (or anyone) and offer it for download (as a DVD and CD ISO) providing no money exchanges hands.

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Suse's linux always looks good; just don't ever try to rebuild its packages or maintain them, and never mix them with any other distro. They don't conform to established convention, and their tools are so highly hacked that they're on the verge of collapse.

The company's the same way: they know what they're doing, and don't ask too many questions. I can only assume their attitude toward inquiring minds was some cultural defensiveness.

Oh, how I wish Novell could gut the company and make a distro out of suse's stuff, something we could actually maintain and extend without tearing out hair out.

Finally, LEE: LEARN ABOUT APT . It does RPMs now, too, for a number of years, even. It's almost negligent to ignore this information.

It seems the entire article could do with a bit more depth, then, as almost every topic mentioned has a certain shallow feel to it.

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Your on target with the custom packages from SUSE.. I am a long time SUSE user and agree that building packages can be trickyy.. But maybe when SUSE is a "large" as redhat people will make buildable packages that compile perfectly on SUSE.. Saturation has a lot to do with what you refer to..

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Novell owned the UNIX System V source code and the UNIX trademark in 1992. They built a binary product out of it called UnixWare that was going to take over the desktop space and solidify UnixWare as the major UNIX server operating system.

Raise your hand if you are running UnixWare today.

Novell has a lot of proving to do. Can they now do with SuSE (based on freely-available code) what they could not do with a name (UNIX) and source code (UNIX System V from AT&T) that they owned exclusively?

Maybe they plan to: give the name SuSE to the Open Group, make a product called SuSEWare, not market it, sell what source code they have left to SCO, and send SCO the phone number of a good lawyer in Utah.

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Novell has a hell of a lot to prove here, and as you assert, history is against SuSE.

Fedora has an admirable development rate, and with up2date/yum, I've been able to keep > 200 systems running in good order and updated with very little research or development overhead.

To me, that's success. But I'd be happy to try another option provided it fulfills similar goals.

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Its quite amazing the kind of amateurish work that goes into writing the articles here on Newsforge. For a premier Open Source information center on the Internet,

I would have thought that the quality of writing expected here would be a lot higher and a lot more technical. The author seems to develop an openion about something as elaborate as a Linux distro, with absolutely no basis for his statement. eg. When he says that RedHat has no config tools, what RedHat is he talking about ? redhat 4 ? cant be really. Since I used RedHat 4. ( yeah<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... I really did ) and even that had ( for the time..) the best installer you could come across.

And someone should tell the author that the Fedora Project was not named by RedHat at all - it always was the Fedora project ( from fedora.us ) that clubbed resources into the RedHat linux project and released their Fedora Core.

At the very least, and i know i share common emotion here, this article is a total and complete waste of

• the webspace it hogs up
• time
• exposure it has gained by being in the front of newsforge.

Either the author really is out of his depth and knows nothing about what he writes on, or the article was about 5 times longer than has been published, and some editor who has had a bit too much to drink has sat down and edited the whole article into this garbage.

In summation : the quality of the articles on newsforge suck!

and as a side note, I would really like to know how long this guy ( the author ) has been using linux and the reasons WHY he uses linux.

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one of the arguments to show why redhat is years ahead of the competition: try to compare the installer of Suse , RedHat and debian....
Suse's install doesnt look good on old machines.. the windows are too big (it's hard to find parts of the window and they dont fit in the screen)...
Debian still only has a text install.. guess whose graphical install are they going to use?? RedHat's Anaconda installer.. Works perfectly on any machine... Fits on the screen... and is GLP...

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Two words why our enterprise is sticking with the 'Hat: Websphere and Oracle.

No config tools my ass. How long did you spend researching for this "column," Lee? Three, maybe four minutes?

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The biggest reason I see people using Red Hat over SuSE is application support. There are enterprise applications that currently are or soon will be supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, such as Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, WebLogic, Cold Fusion, etc. It's also the Linux distribution that is supported/provided by the hardware vendors, e.g. HP, EMC, Dell, IBM (though they do SuSE too), etc. Red Hat will continue to be the business Linux of choice until Novell is able to get the software providers to support SuSE.

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SUSE's Server/Enterprise Server has a great deal of support for most enterprise level software, and we use it for Oracle, Weblogic and SAP among others.

If you need proof see

http://www.suse.com/us/business/certifications/ce<nobr>r<wbr></nobr> tified_software/oracle/

or a list of all certified apps..

http://www.suse.com/us/business/certifications/ce<nobr>r<wbr></nobr> tified_software/applications/index.html

or

http://news.com.com/2100-1011-5053232.html

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Sorry, remove the space in the link for 'all cerified apps' to view it

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Well one thing is sure... I'll continue with Fedora.
SuSe don't even come in iso format!!!

I don't have the time to fiddle with bootdisk.. as much of my test station don't even have those, crappy old floppy !!!

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Then I must have been hallucinating last time
I booted the SuSE installation CD.
Thanks for letting me know!

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Actually, I was also wondering what the "I don't have the time to fiddle with bootdisk.. as much of my test station don't even have those, crappy old floppy !!!" part was about, too.

I bought the CD pack, and no floppy came with it. And, downloaded SuSE's live CD, and no floppy needed there, either.

That there isn't an ISO, as you say, shouldn't be a problem. Don't be a miser and buy the CD pack. Or, do you expect them to live on air and water alone, as you seem to be doing?

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Floppy? We don't need no stinkin' floppy!

If you want it free, download the SuSE boot CD image

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i3<nobr>8<wbr></nobr> 6/9.0/boot/ boot.iso

and boot the machine from the CD/DVD drive.
(Hint: get the IP address of the site before you start)
You'll probably need to know which module your network card needs and the address of your internet gateway. If your connection speed is 1 Mbit/sec (or better) you'll be finished in a couple of hours. I use the ftp install to check-out a "new" version of SuSE before I buy it. Right now, I'm running SuSE 9.0, installed from the DVD that came in the green box, but I checked-out 9.0 (before the purchase) with an ftp installation.

I'm not knockin' Red Hat, I'm just correcting the assertion that SuSE isn't available for just the cost of your bandwidth and a blank CD-R.

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"Floppy? We don't need no stinkin' floppy!"
Yes<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. you need a floppy... unless you never used tripwire or integrit.. dont be naive to think that your server is so secure that you can keep the integrit/tripwire database on a NFS share.. there's nothing safer then a write-protected floppy , when only authorized personnel has access to the location of the servers<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

"(Hint: get the IP address of the site before you start)"

IP? why do you need to know the IP of the download site??? On RH and Fedora , you can boot using a minimal iso image or boot disks and do a network install.. as soon as you configure the network , you get everything , including DNS name resolutions... no need to know the IP of the download site then....

And why doesnt suse has ISO images of the install media available??
There are isos avaliable for fedora and you can even make your own isos with updated packages in case you want to do that... (that's how things work when you have a GPL installer...)

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I've been using RedHat since 4.2. Now I have multiple systems, some with RHEL, others with FC1, others with rawhide.
1) rpm vs. deb. I wouldn't go there. RPM is IMHO much better designed. RPMlib easier to use in python/C/whatever you want.
2) apt. yeah... it's groovy, but it's not the tool that counts. It's the repository. Indeed freshrpms.net is not as huge as debian's one. But it has most of the things you need. Add to that cpan2rpm and you should have most of what you need. Not to mention that I'd rather use yum, or for better management redcarpet. Anywayz, apt and yum are both existing in Fedora Core.
3) RedHat tools. ok, what they are lacking is integration in one huge program (like yast2). Otherwise, you have most of the ones you need. But a true administrator (we are talking about the enterprise market, aren't we? I mean... dewd you must have one), will never configure named, httpd or samba with one of the provided toolz. The standard user doesn't need them in a network, it's the admin's job. I don't find that to be a big problem.
4) Fedora does not mean that Red Hat Linux is abandoned. It's just a rename. In fact, it evolved from rh9 to fc1 and now fc2-test (1.90) more than from any other version. fc2 is a huge leap.

On the other hand, main reasons I use redhat.
1) kernel. bootsplash? Have those guys ever heard of secure/clean coding? If I want a logo, I use the integrated kernel features (the ones in 2.6 are groovy) and rhgb. On the other hand all the patches that the fedora kernel includes make it one of the best kernel releases I've ever worked with.
2)<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/opt/kde<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/opt/kde2<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/opt/kde3<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/opt/gnome<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/opt/gnome2 (does that ring any bells to any SuSE fans?). It sucks big time. A distribution should be perfectly integrated. Anything you add on top of that might have a place in<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/opt.
3) Although qt code looks groovy, the whole qt thing is a big mess. kde... it looks nice, tons of features, but one big problem: do more with less (menus clobbered (is my spelling correct?), toolbars to full). If I want to start KMail, kde starts (except for konqueror and kwm). I'd rather have Evolution for that reason (many others also).

I personaly don't have anything against SuSE. It's just that they don't keep their distribution clean. It's kewl that they have tons of features, but I'd rather have less but better integrated.

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This article is a total joke, and the dufus who wrote it should hang his head in shame.

Red Hat is simply the best server room Linux distribution period. Red Hat just works out of the box and it works well for real enterprise operations. Real system admins who have to run real 24x7 systems with millions of dollars on the line use Red Hat. I have never seen a more irresponsible article passed off as journalism in my life.

The author of this article is a moronic, puerile, brainless imbecile.

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I was a bit bummed at the Novell-SUSE merger, and me thinks that Novell will just drag down SUSE with it. Its no secret that Novell use has decreased rapidly, and purchasing SUSE is just a last ditch effort to get Novell back in the spotlight and spout more buzzwords like "open source".

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