Novell Inc. and adopted prodigy SUSE Linux struck a one-two punch at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here in late January with declarations by top executives that Novell will be a major player in the Linux world and is committed to responsibly shepherding the operating system and Novell’s other open-source projects.
Novell Stakes Its Claim at LinuxWorld
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Eugenia Loli
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I love SuSE linux. Looooooooove it.
I have it too – on k2.6. And now also FC2-test1 – also on k2.6. I didn’t expect that up2date would update FC2-test1 but it does. Amazing.
Both distro’s work great and it is hard to choose between the two. What are the differences really?
SuSE has YaST. Redhat has it’s config procedures.
SuSE uses /opt. Redhat uses /usr/local.
SuSE is more uptodate on KDE than Gnome. FC2 is uptodate on both.
SuSE has .profile. Redhat has .bash_profile.
Etc.
But it all seems to me like nitpicking.
And to further blur a difference, SuSE is now leaaning over towards Gnome after the acquisition by Novell.
So what are the real differences? I don’t see much and if true then the web should have only one download for Linux apps and not one for SuSE and one for Redhat.
Yast is closed source, redhat’s config tools and installer are open source (and have the possobility of being ported to different distros)
1) You have to register via email to get support on your mail server. In my case, the problem we were having was with the mail server.
2) It seems that even though most managers consider email to be “mission critical” that SuSE does not.
Here’s the reply that came a day later –
I’m sorry we don’t provide our support via phone.
Just a few explanations about your questions:
In our Maintenance Web you’ll find the iSLOX tool:
http://sdb.suse.de/en/psdb/html/13e3c4ae3747a08f177fd48e154c8000.ht…
and the documentation:
http://sdb.suse.de/en/psdb/html/bcb470af0578295e04c0211ca9fb5f1b.ht…
With the tool you can synchronize the data from Outlook to the SLOX.
The SLOX needs to be version 4.1 (cat /etc/SLOX-release)
To do a complete migration from MS Exchange to SLOX:
There’s a tool which can be used for migration from MS Exchange to SLOX. Please contact your partner or a partner close to you, so they can arrange everything for you.
A list of partners can be found here:
http://www.suse.de/en/partner/search_partners/business_partners/ind…
Another possibility might be to install SLOX, create the user you want to transfer.
Mails can be transfered via IMAP. There need to be the account on the SLOX and then set up an IMAP account to the SLOX and copy the emails from to the IMAP folder, so they will be added into the SLOX IMAP folder.
To synchronize the calendar and contacts there’s also another tool on our developerserver: http://devel.slox.info
On our Mailinglist about SuSE Linux Openexchangeserver there’s a thread how to migrate data from MS Exchange to SLOX:
http://www.suse.de/de/business/mailinglists.html
in the archive you’ll find: Migration from MS Exchange 5.5
But please note, we don’t officially help within our support with those issues.
Unfortunately our product support included with your product does
only cover the basic installation and basic network configuration
(setting up the network devices) and not the detailed configuration
of other services.
In addition it does entitle you for one year of maintenance. Within
that period we provide bugfixes and security fixes through our
Maintenance Web and support you if the installation of a patch does
not work or break something.
Therefore, for a whole migration we suggest to contact a partner.
Best regards,
Your SUSE LINUX Support Services-Team
Ursula Brueckner (SUSE Support <[email protected]>)
— SUSE LINUX AG Tel: +49-(0)180-5003612 Maxfeldstrasse 5 Fax: +49-(0)911-740 53 489 90409 Nürnberg Email: SUSE Support <[email protected]> Germany WWW: http://support.suse.de/
Novell recently visited my school, trying to pimp SuSE Linux. It was a disaster.
They had no academic pricing information. Literally, I had to contact them and give them some clues as to how to sell it to our school. In contrast, Red Hat came to us with both barrels cocked and loaded, and it took us a whole, what, ten minutes to agree to their terms (the contract’s being looked at by lawyers now for final approval).
They stumbled badly over how Netware would be integrated into SuSE exclusively (“what do you mean, we can’t use it with Red Hat? We’re not locking into SuSE, thanks.”)
They couldn’t answer the easy “what’s your long-term plan for GNOME and KDE?” Their answer of “support both for now” did not do much to enlighten us. Unless they’re going to force everyone to install the kde, gtk, gnome, and qt libs, YaST is going to need to change toolkits, or something.
They did a horrid job of trying to tell us why XD3 would be so great.
They did made a serious faux paz and announced that their vision of open source was not the same as Red Hat’s. Everyone in the room started wondering if that meant they’d be putting in more closed source software (not a good thing in a University environment). Their rep dodged, which really didn’t help things.
The Mono patent issues came up, and the rep dodged that question, too. “We’ll deal with it when it comes up.”
“So, is the Netware kernel going to die?” “No, we’ll keep supporting it.” “How long?” “Uh, we don’t know. Till v11 and beyond, probably.” No one believed this. Why bother with the Netware kernel when you’ve got Linux?
On the plus side, they were able to answer the SCO lawsuit with some conviction.
In short, they gave us very little reason to move to SuSE, and nearly killed any goodwill they had with the faculty. Novell obviously DOES NOT HAVE A PLAN. They need to get one before we’re going to take them seriously.
I’m sorry to say that, because I don’t mind competition. Helps everyone at the end of the day. But, frankly, SuSE has no direction other than “more of the same” – and “more of the same” isn’t going to work anymore with the acquisition of Ximian and the work to put Netware into the mix.
-Erwos
Nice with a real life story. Maybe you got the newbie sales rep? Anyway, I’m sure Novell/SuSE are interested in feedback – if nothing else then your posting from here.