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Story: Suse cofounder leaves NovellTotal Replies: 5
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Koriel

Nov 09, 2005
3:30 PM EDT
As i said here http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/19561/ Novell/Suse has begun imploding.

Linux was just anthor failed strategy for them, i have no idea what is wrong with them they have managed to achieve initial success with a great product (Netware) but they just seem incapable of maintaining it for any length of time the Suse product is already fracturing so some good may come of it but to be honest i don't see it helping Novell much as i can't honestly see a large community like RHat has with fedora crowd growing up around it.

JMHO

Ooops, this was meant to be in cjcox's thread, please post there sorry :( Feel free to move this Dave.
tadelste

Nov 10, 2005
11:25 AM EDT
See what happens when you untitle a post. It confused the flock.
cjcox

Nov 11, 2005
2:16 PM EDT
Novell certainly has a struggle ahead of itself. They seem to be focusing resources (a lot of resources) on things that probably don't matter instead of improving upon what they already knew well. Red Hat had a finger (or comb) in their coat pocket, put it in Novell's back and Novell fell for it.

Novell appears to be quite satisfied with getting rid of any value they had. YaST could be made into something truly impressive. I could really care less about Mono... Mono will live on for those who like it... but right now it's just not that reliable. Novell has a load of enterprise level tools. Properly integrated they could have made the SUSE platform great. Doesn't appear that we'll see that. Even though Red Hat knows next to nothing about integration, system administration tools (apparently not willing to learn from the commercial Unix distros)... Novell has decided to abandon ship on its strengths and focus on weaknesses that matter not to the enterprise.

Things that matter:

1. Logical Volume Management. SUSE was THE pioneer Linux distribution in this space. Novell allowed Red Hat to 0wn the company behind it. Red Hat, who next to nothing about enterprise storage mgmt, now owns the company that made SUSE important in that space. Big mistake.

2. Clustering. SUSE never touted its clustering capability. More of the same from Novell. Red Hat continues to tout their solution. In fact they brag about it openly.

3. Reiserfs4. Great potential. I look for Novell to abandon Reiserfs instead of trying to help them make it into something wondrous. Maybe they'll work with IBM on EVMS and JFS (which is a sad representation of the jfs in AIX).

4. LDAP. Novell... need I say more? Novell USED (used to, used to) TO own this space. For whatever reason Novell believes that it's time for Netscape (Red Hat) to assume control. Fine. Whatever.

5. Email, Microsoft Exchange, GroupWise, etc. Novell had a lot they could bring in this area. Right now the best client that interfaces with Exchange is Evolution. However Evolution crashes more than Windows itself. This is one of the biggest opportunities blown by Novell. If enterprises felt that any Linux distribution had a client that would connect to their existing M$ Exchange server, they'd buy it. If you could then migrate the data from Exchange... you'd own the whole market.

6. Virtualization and machine partitioning. Red Hat is claiming something in this area. Novell looks like it is rolling over and playing dead... even though SUSE was (again) a pioneer in support of Xen.

7. Hardware vendor support. It would really help if the big boyz (IBM, Red Hat, Novell) could help make this a reality. You still can't go to a store to even buy a simple USB memory stick without worrying about lack of Linux compatibility. Trust me... I'd say its 50/50 if you buy one at Fry's blindly. The big boyz should be out there helping to make sure that Linux support is there for hardware devices.

The good news is that the countries that produce a lot of hw are going to become more and more Linux dependent. Of course, it might mean that the Linux drivers will only be available in China, Taiwan, Korea, etc.

Novell, Red Hat, IBM... none of you are prepared to lead.

Ubuntu's success should come as no surprise.

salparadise

Nov 11, 2005
10:46 PM EDT
However Evolution crashes more than Windows itself.

I have to take issue with that. It doesn't. At all.

Evolution is an awesome app. It receives and responds to, Outlook Calendar events. The only thing I can't seem to do with it is view other peoples public calendars.
cjcox

Nov 14, 2005
3:22 PM EDT
Want to see it crash.. attach it to your M$ Exchange server.
salparadise

Nov 14, 2005
9:42 PM EDT
Define "attach" please.

I run several Linux boxes at work, all using Evolution, all of which logon onto the Exchange2003 server and Evolution does NOT crash on me.

Unless there's some aspect to "attach it to your Exchange Server" that I'm not aware of.

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