Mandriva, with the recent purchase of Lycoris, a U.S. Linux desktop distributor, is expanding rapidly, but analysts ask whether it’s growing fast enough to compete with the major Linux vendors: Red Hat and Novell/SuSE.
Mandriva Aims to Become Linux-Desktop Player
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Eugenia Loli
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Maybe if they bought out Linspire they’d have a fleeting chance to catch Red Hat and Novell. As it stands, Lycoris won’t expand their American clientele. There just isn’t enough hoopla to generate the needed excitement. The fact that they just emerged from bankruptcy protection doesn’t excatly inspire confidence.
I sure hope so; in many ways Mandrake has been a much better dist than RedHat lately; and anything and everything is better than Suse (I loathe YAST, because I’ve had to use (read: wait for) it).
Actually that’s a pretty big deal. I take it you would never buy diapers from K-Mart….
They’re supposedly in black ink now which is more than you can say for a lot of companies, even some big ones.
And now they’re buying up other tiny companies. I think they’re doin alright; 2 years ago I thought they were doomed!
Mandrake used to be one of my fave distros. Was even a Silver Member for year but, for some time now, their stability and performance has just sucked.
I’m planning to do a review of 3 or 4 distros that I’m very familiar with – have done some preliminary testing already and to make a long story short, Mandrake gets the lowest marks.
I gave up on Mandrake when for two releases in a row I couldn’t boot the system (after clean install) because of kernel panics, whereas I have NEVER had a kernel panic before that on the same hardware (actually, ever now that I think about it).
Microsoft and Apple will always be in the head. Linux always will be in the end trying to be the first.
Yes, cause you know, Apple is doing so well in the server market compared to Linux 😛
Well, I’ve used it since version 8.0, and I’ve never had a kernel panic. I’ve also followed the Cooker mailing list for two years, and reports kernel panics were very rare. So while other distros may have worked well on your hardware, the problem seems to be linked to it – either that, or bad ISOs, which is also a possibility.
Anyway, that’s the beauty of Linux, it didn’t work for you so you just installed another distro! I’m currently using Mandriva on my desktop and Kubuntu on my laptop, and I’m happy with both. Each has their pluses. Mandriva has nice GUI system configuration tools, by synaptic is a lot faster than rpmdrake! I’ve also had fun using XDMCP to do some remote X from one to another and vice-versa.
Lycoris was dying. They invested too heavily in KDE2 and in general, their technology was just old. This really isn’t going to boost Mandriva. While the article points to RedHat and Novell/SuSE, there is also Ubuntu to contend with. Of all the distributions out there, Ubuntu has shown the best organization behind it. By that, I mean, each release of Ubuntu came out exactly when they said it would without any major problems. While I personally use Fedora, waiting for FC4 and all its delays was a pain.
It’s definitely an uphill battle being fought against two distributions being funded by exceedingly wealthy corporations and Ubuntu which is seemingly the wonderkid. To a certain extent, this consolidation is something easily anticipated. Mandrake, Connectiva, and Lycoris are all RedHat/RPM distros that use KDE and I hate to say it, but they really weren’t big enough alone. By consolidating their efforts, they can eliminate a lot of duplicate effort on distributions that weren’t too different to begin with.
Hopefully, this will strengthen them, but I can’t see them topling Fedora with its huge user community and de-facto status as “THE” linux distro because of its RedHat legacy nor Ubuntu and its status as the wonderkid son-of-Debian. SuSE, I have to say I’ve never been that fond of SuSE. Mostly because I can’t easily download it for free. That’s going to be the most vulnerable position because there are a lot of people that wouldn’t install Linux that wasn’t free (as in beer) and Mandriva can strike at that.
The Linux desktop market is already small enough, without hampering it with ISVs worrying about the Trolltech QT license.
The article talked about standards. It’s time Linux to get a standard desktop – at a minimum a toolkit. And Qt for obvious reasons can never be that.
If Mandriva will keep up with their development pace and start a media blitz that showcases what their desktop offering can do, they have a chance to dominate the desktop.
Suse has been vanilla since they were bought by Novell. And Red Hat never gave the desk top serious consideration opting instead for the enterprise and server space. That leaves Mandriva to shine and show its stuff.
If Mandriva will take advantage of their current position as one of the best desk top distros and leverage their recent acquisitions, they could become a formidable player on the desktop.
They have played their hand very smartly.
They now have a European, and North and South American presence and are positioned very nicely. If this were a chess game, they are making very nice strategic moves.
I don’t get what the big fuss is over using one of these corperate distros. I was in the mandrake club, but – hey.
Distros are coming and going too quickly. Buying them all up won’t help when there is Debain and FreeBSD around.
Why don’t eweek and most news sites care about FreeBSD. It’s always Linux this, Linux that – obsession. Have a headache, take Linux, oh yeah, that word again…
I had nothing better to do this weekend and gave a spin to mandriva 2005 LE x86_64 after strugling with the Hanging Ubuntu and easy to use Slamd64. It installed correctly and recognized all my hardware. The UI is much polished, I guess the best amongst all the distros. I saw a marked difference in file system performance by selecting xfs. After adding plf mirrors I was able to install most of my favourite softwares.
The Linux desktop market is already small enough, without hampering it with ISVs worrying about the Trolltech QT license.
Huh? What are you talking about? Why would ISVs worry about the Trolltech QT license?
Please give me a single ISV which has expressed doubt about the Qt license, or stop spreading your FUD.
The article talked about standards. It’s time Linux to get a standard desktop – at a minimum a toolkit.
Why? Windows has multiple toolkits, and it hasn’t hampered its development at all. What we need is for the various DEs to continue their ongoing cooperation. In any case, it can’t be resolved any other way: neither GNOME nor KDE is going away anytime soon. On the contrary, both are improving rapidly – probably due to the friendly competition between the two desktops.
Competition is good. Get used to it.
And Qt for obvious reasons can never be that.
Please state the obvious reasons, because they are not at all obvious. Both DEs have strong following, though KDE seems to be leading in overall number of desktops according to most polls.
After fueling BSD vs. GLP flame wars, are you now trying to kindle a GNOME vs. KDE one?
-Cleanup(rewrite) the configuration tools, they don’t look like they’re expandable in some configuration tasks, and they should work by themselves as well as in the MCC;
-Have sane default config files for the packages; (package QA should be improved)
-Cleanup mirrors and define a well structured tree and make an effort to expand the mirrors worldwide; (and why aren’t there mandriva ftps? every other distro has own mirrors)
-Revamp the artwork, get a new logo and mascot (I like the star, but there should be a cleanup of what is the Mandriva image… that dead penguin is horrible…)
-Cleanup the installer and have a default config (server, desktop, development workstation, etc), a kind of more modular system (which doesn’t loose package choices when we go back :-P) in which should be possible to choose individual subsets of apps, with well defined virtual packages, I need a webbrowser, why do I get 2 or 3, I need a media player, I can choose xmms, amarok, kaffeine (wtv, it’s not the point) but I wouldn’t have to figure what plugins I need for each one, and need to mess around 10000 packages on the individual choice list;
-Move packages without issues from PLF to contrib to give room for them to package other stuff;
I believe that stuff will evolve to something big with time, Lycoris, Conectiva, the Componentized Linux project and LSB 3 certification, etc, will give MDV the opportunity to build a very good product to the desktop and server, I just hope they don’t blow it. There’s a lot to cleanup in the actual distro, dependency hell, config tools that don’t create proper understandable config files and don’t accept user modifications, etc, etc, serious work is needed and important decisions have to be made, if they really want to aim for a quality product, lets see what they are able to do.
🙂
RedHat should consider buying Mandriva – to get their South American (Connectiva) and other European markets. Then Gnome can be standardized by de-facto and the linux desktop can have a slim chance of being something than a hobbyist desktop.
Until there is a standard desktop, it’s silly to talk about Linux ever having any impact on the desktop.
Huh? What are you talking about? Why would ISVs worry about the Trolltech QT license?
Please give me a single ISV which has expressed doubt about the Qt license, or stop spreading your FUD.
To back him up (although I don’t normally back up trolls…which he is since this article had nothing to do with Gnome or KDE) the QT license requires a company to pay $1500 per developer to link against their toolkit or else the software has to be released under the GPL (QT is t-licensed under QPL, GPL and proprietary license). GTK+ has no such requirement, and is released under the LGPL, which allows proprietary code to be linked against it.
RedHat should consider buying Mandriva – to get their South American (Connectiva) and other European markets. Then Gnome can be standardized by de-facto and the linux desktop can have a slim chance of being something than a hobbyist desktop.
Until there is a standard desktop, it’s silly to talk about Linux ever having any impact on the desktop.
I guess Red Hat should buy Novell too…since they are still pushing KDE with SUSE Pro (which is much more widely used than Novell Linux Desktop) :-P. Face it, with OSS, there is always going to be choice.
(And I know some dumbass is going to say “Red Hat doesn’t have the money to buy Novell” whilst the point of the comment flies right over their head, so just please don’t).
What’s the point of having a Linux Standards Base that won’t address a standard toolkit unless people are happy with Linux continuing to just be relevant in the server room?
Ok, its fair to say that Qt costs a pretty penny for commercial development unless the software is licensed under the GPL. But what isn’t fair is using the Qt licenses as an excuse to make Gnome the default or only desktop environment for everyone. Right now according to the statistics I’ve seen KDE has more users than Gnome, the statistics on OSNews don’t reflect that but at the same time many of the people reading OSNews read it because of the Gnome biased news. Don’t believe me, just look at the links on the left and you’ll find a box dedicated to GnomeFiles.org, yet there’s nothing for KDE.
I much preffer KDE over Gnome, and I refuse to use any distribution that only includes Gnome because I can’t stand that desktop environment. KDE can be included with any Linux distribution free of charge, what costs money is when you decide to write closed source configuration apps or commercial software that use Qt. Users shouldn’t have to give up having a choice because some people don’t like the idea of having to purchase a Qt license if they decide to write closed source software.
As far as Trolltech is concerned I can see how their approach isn’t in the best interest of KDE’s end users; but can you really blame a company for wanting to make money with which to pay its employees and its bills?
GTK may be licensed under the LGPL, but in my opinion as well as in the opinion of the thousands of other people that use Qt, GTK just isn’t as good. As for why this is the case, we don’t have to justify liking one piece of software over another, everyone has valid reasons for their choices and we shouldn’t have to subject ourselves to the scruteny of people who would attack us over a matter of preference.
I can’t help but feel that because KDE/Qt users are outnumbered here there is a large amount of intimidation and bullying going on at this site. Every time there is a KDE/Qt article we have to put up with attacks on KDE/Qt because of Trolltech’s licensing, yet every time there is a Gnome-pride parade KDE/Qt users are expected to shut up and smile. I’m quite sure that even if Trolltech were to license Qt under the LGPL people here would still find reasons to spew out anti-KDE/Qt propaganda.
Sun goes open source, makes Solaris 10 an awesome x86 platform. Microsoft fixes stability, performance, security issue. Apple enters server race with a solid BSD based OS. Novell buys a whole bunch of Linux companies, adds their already awesome programs to it. RedHat adds directory services and a host of new technology and continues building it’s solid technology portfolio. Mandrake buys a whole bunch of user friendly distros and increases usability drastically. This is WWE for nerds.
> And Qt for obvious reasons can never be that.
The biggest Bullshit I’ve ever heard from a clueless like you. Look how much money Google and Nokia has thrown out into the throath of GNOME Foundation. Looks like Money is the least issue here.
Yes concentrating on GNOME could be an option but KDE is still far ahead.
“Then Gnome can be standardized by de-facto and the linux desktop”
Ugh! The day that happens is the day I stop using Linux….but it’ll never happen so the point is moot. Choice is good. Gnome isn’t bad but it’s too slow and difficult to modify (e.g. try changing colours for theme elements).
I’ve been running MDV for a few weeks now and have hit a few snags….but on the whole, it’s a polished distro and well worth a look if you haven’t already.
I tried Kubuntu and Ubuntu before this to see what the hype was all about, only to discover it was just that…hype. Nice Debian-based distro’s but no gui config tools made things more difficult than they could have been. It’d be nice to see something like Yast included in future.
The win32 api has to be about the crappiest api ever invented, but it’s higher level with regards to the gui portion of it than Xlib. Developers always have that common target on windows. In linux and solaris and bsd the only lowest common denominator is Xlib. It’s way too low-level to be a common denominator target.
Unix on the desktop (except OSX) has enough troubles with these petty toolkit wars. In the end it just hurts Unix on the desktop. Hell, even the proprietary Unix vendors had agreed on CDE and Motif. Their problem was that proprietary Unix was expensive and never even intended for the home user.
You can always have choice. No one can ever take that away from you on OpenUnix. I’d rather just E17 when it comes out, but the point is that there is no common denominator. Until that happens its crazy to talk about linux on the desktop.
And yes the Qt license issue is a problem and one of the reasons that RedHat, Novell, and Sun went with gtk+
and anything and everything is better than Suse (I loathe YAST, because I’ve had to use (read: wait for) it).
Each to their own. I find YaST well worth waiting for.
I can’t see how this is a good thing, where until recently the major justification for corporate GNU/Linux distributions was the monetary support of people who would be developing FOSS anyway. It seems to me we’ll have at best the same number of paid developers after these buyouts, and probably at least a few less.
I also don’t understand why being a ‘major Linux vendor’ is suddenly a big deal. Until very recently it wasn’t the size of the company that mattered, it was the quality of the distribution and it’s integration. But as FOSS support from more traditional corporations such as IBM and HP builds, all of a sudden it’s the size of the distribution’s stockpile that’s important?
It’s all BS. It isn’t the fault of the community, or even IBM and HP, but of pop media glamorizing FOSS without having any clue at all what it’s about (either that or trying to corrupt it to protect their way of thought), and these “major vendors” jumping on the bandwagon at the scent of money.
I don’t use it, but thank god for Debian. I thought GNU was supposed to be an alternative to the corporate mess that modern day computing has become. Apparently nobody besides RMS cares about this anymore?
“Microsoft and Apple will always be in the head. Linux always will be in the end trying to be the first.”
The last I heard linux was in second place in terms of desktop market share. I believe it was IDC that put this estimate out last year putting linux ahead of macos world wide.
to hear the ridiculous name they come up with after this one.
ManDriCorvis?
Mandriva now stands a very good chance of delivering the best linux desktop (after some Debian derivatives which in my opinion are unbeatable, like Kanotix)
As it has been said Red Hat/Fedora has never been a serious desktop contender.
As to SUSE I began to like it less and less as I became a more advanced user: it is buggy, slow, bloated and heavily customized. A few examples? You can’t open a range of ports in 9.3 firewall. Firestarter refuses to start. TurboPrint doesn’t work. Multimedia and P2P support are very poor. Why a modern linux distro can’t even give you a bittorrent client?
To back him up (although I don’t normally back up trolls…which he is since this article had nothing to do with Gnome or KDE) the QT license requires a company to pay $1500 per developer to link against their toolkit or else the software has to be released under the GPL (QT is t-licensed under QPL, GPL and proprietary license). GTK+ has no such requirement, and is released under the LGPL, which allows proprietary code to be linked against it.
I’m aware of this, but if a company is going to put out commercial products, the licensing fee is quite acceptable – especially as you’ll be able to count it as an expense. Also, consider that it isn’t for a single project, but can be re-used once bought. Seriously, I don’t think this is really an issue – in any case I haven’t heard of a single ISV who was specifically turned off by it.
Not that it really matters, anyway. Gnome apps run under KDE, and vice-versa.
Didn’t Mandrake go bang a couple of years ago? Must have taken a captain miracoulous to pull such a comeback…
Unix on the desktop (except OSX) has enough troubles with these petty toolkit wars.
There are no toolkit wars. They only exist in the minds of anti-Linux advocates, who see this as a “wedge” issue and hammer on it in hope of causing strife within the community. Stop your trolling, it’s quite immature. No one’s complaining about the multiple Windows toolkits…
Hell, even the proprietary Unix vendors had agreed on CDE and Motif. Their problem was that proprietary Unix was expensive and never even intended for the home user.
Well…perhaps the problem is that CDE and Motif were crap. What good does it do to “standardize” when you do it on an inferior product?
The healthy competition between Gnome and KDE has caused both projects to improve at tremendous rates – no wonder anti-Linux posters like you try to inflame the rivalry between the two DEs…
And yes the Qt license issue is a problem and one of the reasons that RedHat, Novell, and Sun went with gtk+
Uh, no, it wasn’t. I dare you to prove me wrong.
Meanwhile, SuSE is still KDE (even after being bought by Novell), Mandriva is still KDE (and has bought two other KDE-based distros), so is Linspire, and so is Xandros. Ubuntu is Gnome-based, but Kubuntu is rapidly gaining in popularity. In fact, as others have pointed out, KDE still enjoys a lead in most polls on the matter.
Not that it matters, really: we don’t need a single DE, that’s not what Linux (or Unix, for that matter) is all about. It’s about choice, and using what you like, not what someone else decided was good for you.
Its not funny anymore Mandriva need to sue all those analyst and so called press reporter who put out those lies and incomplete summary and who are specifically underming there company and giving a false global picture of the company.
First of all Mandriva is Headquartered in France , its not a Paris based company , with developper in Canada , the US , Germany , Russia , Brazil , China , Japan , etc … and with sale Office in Italy , US , Brazil and France and unofficial in many other country true partners , there base is ABSOLUTELY not exclusively in Paris …
If they are French company only , why are they currently supporting over 64 language and have the need to Translate n anything else but French ?
Mandriva is currently the #1 GNU/Linux commercial global company which is truely global and cover all market.
Kusnetzky needs someone to give him some french lesson “Cessation des paiements” is absolutely not the same thing as bankrupty protection , Bankrupty in french is Banqueroute. Mandriva never whas in Bankrupty protection.
According to this incompetent analyst , Lycoris whas down to only one devlopper/one employee Joseph Cheek , he is clueless to the fact that some user where also part of the development effort and most of them hopefully will also join the Mandriva community.
Mandriva is the Former MandrakeSoft they are in no way a new player on the GNU/Linux market they have been one of the Biggest player since there creation in 1998 beating out SUSE out of the market and Beating Red Hat in the US in sales in the past. Where SUSE whas acquire by IBM and then Sold to Novell in 2004 due to Mandriva easily beating them due to there former proprietary offer , and where Red Hat dropped its customer version and desktop version , Mandriva as stayed the course and even when they where in some trouble never stopped pushing there products and covering all sector. Curently Leading the commercial on Desktop and delivering deployed and in use Cluster solution in Europe.
Mandriva is also fully compatible with Red Hat and SUSE making any package from SUSE and Red Hat upon recompilation a no brainer.
In the long term it will be the software vendor problem to be certified on Mandriva and to have only chosen to be certified on Red Hat and Novell/SuSE only.
Mandriva unlike Red Hat and SUSE as add all its product LSB compliant and certified as such in the past , also they are certified EAL 5 , wich Novell is at level 3 and Red Hat level 4.
Where the Analyst are wrong is where they see Red Hat and Novell/SUSE as expanding the market as been covered for some time by Mandriva.
The single Fact that Mandriva ( as MandrakeSoft ) made a succesfull IPO where SUSE and Linspire failed to do so is a big enough clue as to there actual strenght.
Remember this SUSE the company whas killed By Mandriva , Red Hat exited the customer market and desktop market because of Mandriva , and the only one that beat them in size in community is Debian Core and all the Debian base togheter.
If you dont see Mandriva for what they are the #1 Commercial GNU/linux distribution its because you dont have all the data or are paid by someone else for your opinion. Red Hat and Novell have more money for now, Mandriva as more market share and are covering more markets.
Because of the nature of the source code you can’t take away choice of desktops. That’s not the point. The point is to have a common denominator that can be targetted. Until that issue is resolved then there is no reason to talk about Linux on the desktop except for the hobbyist.
To even think of Qt as a standard toolkit for Linux or any other OpenUnix desktop is foolish. It’ll never happen.
I guess some people are happy with the status quo as Microsoft continues to dominate 5 years after Linux was supposed to take off.
Hey, OS-News Maintainers. Could you please block this IVAN – IP address from posting. It seems to be a troll-bot.
As much work as any Linux company does, IMO you can’t polish a turd and it’s still got the problem of being based on Linux and all that that intails. Hardware incompatabily, package management issues, Lack of GUI configuration, Lack of major applications (I.e. Macromedia, Adobe, 3ds Studio -et al)
After 10 years of battling with linux, trying to re-learn a different computing paradigm and sweating blood with lack of usability, I’ve given up.
good luck to Suse, Mandriva and all the others, but I think they’d be better spent ploughing resources into a different OS, or creating a new on from scratch.
Remember this SUSE the company whas killed By Mandriva , Red Hat exited the customer market and desktop market because of Mandriva , and the only one that beat them in size in community is Debian Core and all the Debian base togheter.
SuSE is back in the race with SuSE 9.3
NOVELL has bought IMMUNNIX secure Linux.I hope they will include IMMUNNIX AppWall (equivalent of REDHAT SELinu yet easier to configure,thus less potential faults,more secure) in the coming SuSE 9.4 Combined with the enhanced X feaures and perhaps an improved SuSE Firewall GUi (more options,like opening/closing ports makes it an adversary to reckon with.
If they think they will acquire linux companies that have really no closed IP worth anything, discontinue those brands and form a new one… they must be insane for acquiring in the first place!
Best of luck for Mandriva. I’ve used several distros and Mandriva is the best generic desktop Linux distro to date. That said, they do need to invest a little more in QA, an to drop supermount (which causes a number of problems). I don’t think that there’s much competition from RH here — they are leveraging their popularity in the server space to put out desktop distributions (which are weak). I also have Novell’s distro here in the office, and it’s not as polished as Mandriva’s (though, I dare say that Mandriva could do to hire their graphic artists).
I don’t see their focus on KDE being a liability. GNOME enthusiasm aside, KDE is clearly what their customers (and the majority of Linux users, it appears) demands. It’s somewhat easier to build and maintain for them as well. It make business sense.
The Qt license is not an issue for commercial development. As anyone that’s done commercial development is aware, $1700 per seat for a capital expense (and tax write-off) per developer is (relatively speaking) a pittance. It would only be prohibitive in some fairly rare cases, and Trolltech could work something out with you. If you GPL license your app, there’s no cost at all. Currently, I use several commercial Qt-baesd applications but I don’t have any commercial Gtk-based apps (and I don’t use the toolkit as a criterion for selection of what I buy).
Now that Adobe is looking into developing for Linux, and Macromedia is making some of their tools available, I think we are starting to see some impetus here. Really, if Intuit could be brought on board to port their apps (just recompile with WINE?), I think you’d really have something.
‘Well…perhaps the problem is that CDE and Motif were crap. What good does it do to “standardize” when you do it on an inferior product?’
Aaaah the words of a man who never used the system….
Certainly not as good looking as more modern desktops, BUT it did its job! Somthing often forgotten in sales buzzwords, unless a feature makes me more productive i dont use it
Noone installing a sun web server needs bluetooth support and the countless other features included in KDE and Gnome.
I agree 100% with Mr. Stiglitz, though I haven’t had serious issues with supermount. I have tried a few desktop distributions, and I find Mandriva 2005 the best. Presently I do all my academic work on it, and have become a member of the Mandriva Club.
I sincerely hope that Mandriva keeps growing and improving their excellent distro.
“To even think of Qt as a standard toolkit for Linux or any other OpenUnix desktop is foolish. It’ll never happen.”
The QT license might be a problem, but GTK, while possibly convenient, is simply too primitive visually, and Gnome is too lacking in features to compete with other modern OSes. And not dramatically improving in that regard in any particular hurry. Face it, it’s a geek’s DE. Christ, all you have to do is look at the Gnome Control Panel.
They’d better learn to make QT work, because the alternative is simply too archaic.
Noone installing a sun web server needs bluetooth support and the countless other features included in KDE and Gnome.
To use your own words: “the words of a man who never used the system….”
You don’t have to install anything you don’t want in KDE/Gnome. All the features are divided into separate packages so you can only install what you need.
As far as CDE goes, yes, I did try it. It’s not that it’s not usable (I really like XFCe, which is really CDE’s heir), but it was SO ugly that it actually prevented me from comfortably using the system.
The point is to have a common denominator that can be targetted.
No, because all apps can run on all DEs. There is already a common denominator, it’s called the X Window System.
I guess some people are happy with the status quo as Microsoft continues to dominate 5 years after Linux was supposed to take off.
Microsoft dominating has nothing to do with Linux toolkits, but rather everything to do with MS’s predatory monopolistic practices.
“SuSE is back in the race”
SUSE is dead , now SUSE whas a ** company *** who’s product had the same name , under IBM they where kept alive and had there own identity when Novell bough them from IBM they closed everything ( website , office ) and only kept the product and some developper and renamed them Novell.
“SUSE is dead , now SUSE whas a ** company *** who’s product had the same name , under IBM they where kept alive and had there own identity when Novell bough them from IBM they closed everything ( website , office ) and only kept the product and some developper and renamed them Novell.”
Can you prove it? Not trying to be funny, I am seriously interested.
Do what I did , ask for the financials. Novell beeing a public company buy one share and ask for a copy of the Novell … IBM/SUSE deal. Do the same with IBM financials.
type http://www.suse.com see it redirected to Novell …
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.suse.com
Look up there old website and identity.
http://www.vnunet.com/crn/news/2138345/novell-rumoured-offloading-s…
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3511611
http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb053105-story01.html
http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2005/05/23/daily44.htm…
I knew SUSE very well when it whas SUSE the company now its an empty shell of what it whas or could have been.
IBM kept SUSE alive because they did not whant a repeat of another Microsoft in Red Hat. IBM strategy is a stupid one as usual they where an hardware company mostly , now with the sale of there computer division to Lenovo they are just a big service company.
The one Hardware maker who will dominate GNU/Linux will be the one smart enough to send a copy of is development and current hardware to the most relevant distribution and have them do a Master cd for the product ( Mandriva , Ubuntu , Knoppix , PCLinuxOS , maybee Debian and Red Hat ).