Red Hat has maintained the pure open-source approach, making open-source software available to users, says Gartner analyst George Weiss. “For the end-user, the software may be open source, but the question is, ‘How much do I have to pay to enable the software with a subscription?’“
Head to Head: Red Hat vs. SuSE
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I will just continue my Slackware subscription (because I choose to subscribe, not because I have too). With Swaret, Dropline Gnome, the Slackware community, and Slackware’s long and stable history, I feel that it is a better choice.
Redhat is not what it used to be with its structure change. It can be too expensive for smaller companies looking to test the Linux waters and Fedora is too bleeding edge for prodution.
Suse is also pricey at the Enterprise level, but at least they offer a viable consumer level version. My problem with Suse is the question of Novell’s direction and Suse being KDE based. Are they going to redo everyting to integrate Ximian? Will Novell get too involved with the SCO debacle and lose site of Suse?
Just my two cents.
Gartner is considered to be one of the “wise” companies and fortune tellers of the ICT world. Hmm, how many times have they been sooo wrong in the past ?
This time, they make a choice again, again favorable for the American company. I still consider SuSE to be German, thus European. This does not surprise me at all.
I’ve used both, RH and SuSE. Both cannot compare to Slackware. This is THE distro when it comes to stability. Deep in the trenches of a server park, I bet my money on Slack. I sleep a lot better knowing my server runs Slack instead of RH and SuSE.
I do not agree that you should not compare Linux distros. It’s an important thing to do. I like comparisons. Most of the times, reviews are like “look: I have 5 pages, 3 are about installing the thing, 1 about the apps that came with it, and 1 with what I found the hour after installation”. There’s no page 6, because I threw away my installation and went back to my distro.
I found myself lately “making” a lot of programs. Apache did not come with the Proxy and ProxyReverse -> Do my own make. Postgresql did not have tcl as a language -> make it myself … In such a case, I really don’t give a d.mn about how well KDE looks on my machine….. I didn’t even install it !!
I also have a Mac. Linux people should look a bit more towards that. Instead of fighting over Gnome or KDE, they should find a unified way of handeling things. And that includes all the differences in file structure, desktop, … which is being enforced by RH and SuSe (and others) because they only care about their distro and not about the user.
And I guess if they would’ve have chose Suse because it’s european everything would’ve been alright. Oh well, another european trying to start a trans-atlantic pissing match.
Subscription enabled? Well, technically SUSE Enterprise editions are too. Whoopeee.
Don’t like it? Make your own RedHat Enterprise Linux, or use one of the custom ones:
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org
For those of you interested in the slackware/BSD style boot here’s an article from IBM.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-slack.html
You are saying Gartner chose RH only becasue it is an American company. They are both American companies now but please enlighten me as to why Gartner is wrong. here is the last sentence.
“He noted that Red Hat has grabbed a lion’s share of the enterprise space, but that SuSE is well ahead on desktop Linux technology and is intent on developing an integrated desktop system.”
I don’t think you are quite a troll because you make some interesting points in your first message. But throwing the political angle in was unnecessary. Accusing someone of bias for an American company is uninformed without evidence they are doing so, and is also bias itself. You then say you are not trying to start a pissing match, yet throw in some bait by dissing the American president.
I hope your first comment isn’t modded down. But if you really want to keep the discussion on topic and interesting, stop with the political side points.
In our market (U.S.) the better product gets bought its a sink or swim here. We buy 20x more products from out of the country than we send out. We have no problem with buying German cars, we love them even though they’re more expensive. Red Hat might just be better and G.W.Bush is not behind this conspiracy.
I see two places SuSe beats Red Hat. YasT and including propritary software. while Red Hat has more advantages than I
care to list.
Never blame patroitism when peoples wallets are concerned, we choose saving money everytime. Before you say SuSe is cheaper we are talking enterprise here where Red Hat has a huge advantage.
that should have been
I think its stupid to do versus linux distros ;(
is BSD or other oses around there not good for enterpise?
FreeBSD makes a pretty solid server. It’s is just a bit more pick about hardware (what in my opinion is good). In the past it had a favourable gap at their side when contrasted to linux (at server side), but I don’t think it still holds.
That second post was pure flamebait. Truth is, neither distros are *that* good. Red Hat’s installer is pretty nice tho. I haven’t tried Suse since 8.0 (and that version blew) so I’ll reserve judgement.
SuSE IMHO got a lot better with 8.2.
I have run Red Hat 5.0, 8.0, 9.0, SuSE 8.0, 8.2 & 9.0.
I like Suse 9.0 the best.
To me YaST2 is a big plus for SuSE as is reiserfs (better than ext3).
I hated filling out the serveys for free Red Hat updates.
They are both good OS’s.
If SuSE goes the way of Red Hat and drops the home version, I will switch to Debian.
Mandrake is also very good! though emerging from bankruptcy it has potential too
With IBM and Novell’s backing, I’m confident that SUSE will be dominated on the server and desktop market in the few coming years. IBM was long interested in SUSE even before Novell’s acquisition.
We can all brag about how “Gentoo” is cool, or “Slackware” rulz..etc, but the reality is Redhat and SUSE are both certified distro, be it security or LSB, and have a great and growing ISV support.
SUSE now has the advantage of Novell that enables them to reach more customers through solid worldwide channels.
As far as the desktop goes, Redhad failed their customers while SUSE is still very commitment, not to mention that they produce the most professional distro out there.
First I would like to say I started my life with Linux using RedHat 9.0 and there will always be a place in my heart for it. Ironically I also have used SUSE 9.0. Even though RH9 and RHEL are different it might help to say I spent 80 bucks on SUSE pro and am now using Slackware! This isn’t a flame against SUSE it’s just the performance and the user friendliness killed all of the stuff i wanted to do! Sometimes i wonder why SUSE and RH? Slackware probably has them all beat in all areas assuming you have a good Sysadmin, IMHO that is.
I *dare* you to ask *any* question in the Slackware newsgroup – they will RIP YOU TO SHREDS. Because thats what they do for fun. Too bad they don’t think a little farther than their next “smackdown”, or they might have a compelling distro. If you challenege the regulars (who will all tell you to “RTFM!”, they will try to get your ISP account cancelled. Don’t believe me? TRY IT. That racist +=Chiron=+ is the worst.
Red Hat almost bought out SuSe 4 times in the last two years, but thier partners didn’t want one company to own linux, what does this mean? SuSe is only around because we don’t want one distro out in front. Red Hat is the best, (for business) SuSe is just being proped up as larger than life cause people don’t want red hat running away with the trophy.
Sorry if people get upset but its true.
“Red Hat almost bought out SuSe 4 times in the last two years, but thier partners didn’t want one company to own linux, what does this mean? SuSe is only around because we don’t want one distro out in front. Red Hat is the best, (for business) SuSe is just being proped up as larger than life cause people don’t want red hat running away with the trophy.”
I am glad they didn’t. I like Redhat, have used it since 5.2. I finally had to throw in the towel on them though as they are not moving forward with hardware detection. Basically neither RHEL or Fedora Core will recognoize and let me use all my hardware. SuSE on the other hand does. Actually is the only distro that recognizes everything. I no longer have days to configure things, so automagically is nice, and SuSE is the only one I have tried that does it right. And no, I am not upset, to each thier own. As is with anything, use the right tool for the job. Each distro has it’s use.
I just put Fedora on the box. It required that the
user log onto the internet using root as default.
No. Not ready for the enterprise. Or anything else
really.
It’s actually pretty amazing that Slack is still around. I started using it (and still do) when it was one of the only distro options, and it’s still here. Kinda strange really, because it lacks a lot modern conveniences I’d expect people would want…
Anyways, I bought SuSE 9 recently to just check it out — I use Linux for routing and file serving (i.e. I don’t use Linux), but SuSE is pretty nice — a little bloated perhaps, difficult to “strip down” (even more than Red Hat), plus I don’t care for GUI’s on Linux as of yet, but YaST is one of the best tools around. With Novell and Ximian they “at least” have all the elements to make Red Hat play second fiddle in the future. I don’t see any reason why that’s not going to happen.
In the US Redhat is the dominant Linux choice of buisnesses. In Europe SuSE holds this status. In the rest of the world ?
Redhat once had a community of users and developers. Redhat with it’s new buisness plan has dissed the user community and it’s ties with the developer community are now coordinated through Fedora. The Fedora community is now open but pitifully small in contrast to the old Redhat community-it remains to be seen if this will change with time. Yet Redhat has employed the some of the most important developers in the Linux community-this kind of support for the community has been sorely lacking in other companies promoting and selling Linux.
SuSE never had a open community. SuSE was never interested in having one-in fact they did their best at precluding the growth of one. SuSE does not simply endorse propietary products- they discourage the community from being involved in their products. The closest SuSE has come to endorsing open community is by offering KDE developers a platform testbed to further development of KDE. SuSE of course has contributed to the developer community-most importantly KDE, Reiser and Xfree. SuSE unfortunately never hired any of the major Linux developers.
If one looks at the corporate culture’s of SuSE and Redhat one could argue that SuSE is most like Sun and Redhat is most like IBM. Now that SuSE is owned by Novell thing are bound to change. Ximian is and has been very community oriented. Novell has no experience with open communities-For Novell community has always mean certified Novell administrators.
How the culture’s of Novel, Ximian and SuSE will coalesce is still out-we will have to wait and see. Yet Novell seems to be following the route which Redhat has pursued- they have hired and probably will hire more of the major developers in the community. Whereas SuSE lacked any kind of leadership skills regarding Linux, Novell will probably now seek to attain such status.
SuSE and Ximian have major tie-ins with Sun and SuSE has really close relations with IBM. If Novell really integrates Ximian into their upcomming distro release many KDE developers will feel stabbed in the back. SuSE has a horrible history with GNOME and by extension Ximian. Redhat has given most of it’s support to GNOME-albeit their support of KDE has always been better than SuSE’s support of GNOME. I for one am really curious to see what will happen in the comming months. As of now SuSE will remain SuSE-KDE-based and their propietary products will now be Novell products. And Ximian will remain a open-community based enhancement of GNOME with propietary aspects. Novell seems to be enthralled by the Mono developments-which are lead by Miguel de Icaza,former CEO of Ximian, something which can only be a thorn in the side of the collaboration between Ximian/SuSE and Sun. But who knows what things will look like at Novell in one year from now……
I think Miguel was the CTO of Ximian, not the CEO. Anyway, besides the point.
I think IBM wants there to be at least 2 Linux partners, not just one. Maybe on some level they do not want a repeat of Microsoft. The company they helped grow ended up becoming their biggest antagonist.
I think in US at least, IBM will motsly push Redhat, because they are the biggest there by a mile. In Europe they will probably push SUSE most because they are big there. Of course there will be competition and thats what IBM wants. It helps keep costs down for them.
That said, I think Redhat makes a better Enterprise product than SUSE right now. They have an impressive ISV list, and good support lifetimes. They also provide free upgrades to their operating systems for companies who might decide to upgrade to the new latest and greatest. contrast this to some company in Redmond who want you to pay. As long as you have a contract with them, you are pretty much ok.
SUSE may have a product for the home desktop market, but I think ultimately it doe not matter because users are not flocking to it. I do not thin Novell has any illusions about making waves on the home desktop. Microsoft has that locked down and totally secure.
I do not thin Novell has any illusions about making waves on the home desktop. Microsoft has that locked down and totally secure.
Yup, it’s a simple fact that must be faced — for now. The Corporate desktop being a slightly different story though.
Anyways, about the Ximian/SuSE KDE thing: This is what every one is wondering, isn’t it? I wonder if they’ve already come with some kind of plan by now. And when are they going to clue everyone in on it?
Technically, integrating QT and GTK apps, at least superficially, isn’t a problem. SuSE already does this with GTK using Geramik. Taking it further than that would just be a matter of time. Either that, or they port their stuff and become more GTK centric, without leaving KDE in the dust. I don’t see it’s that big of a deal, and why their success is riding on this issue.
“Slackware probably has them all beat in all areas assuming you have a good Sysadmin, IMHO that is.”
>>>>
Ever tried to get Oracle’s unbreakable support for Slackware? Ever tried to use Slackware in an evironment (some public authorities come to my mind) where all software needs specific certifications to be an option at all?
Re: dave.t’s earlier posting:
“I just put Fedora on the box. It required that the
user log onto the internet using root as default.
No. Not ready for the enterprise. Or anything else
really.”
What recent Red Hat and Fedora Core releases have done is to move the non-root user creation away from the installer and put it into the “firstboot” system instead, which is not unreasonable. What I suspect dave.t managed to do was to skip past that user creation system and then log in directly as root. One would hope Red Hat/Fedora would warn the person that it’s strongly advisable to create at least one non-root user for security reasons (e.g. with a pop-up dialog during firstboot if you clicked on “Cancel” to skip) – you could criticise them for that if they didn’t I guess. Similarly, they should also pop up a warning if you attempt to log into the desktop as root.
Strangely enough, I *did* create a non-root user during “firstboot” for Fedora Core 1 and I’m using it now for my desktop – in fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever bothered logging into the desktop as the root user (I just use “su -” when I want to do root stuff and some of the desktop utils prompt me for the root password if it’s needed).
Please, dave.t, run the “Red Hat User Manager” (or useradd command if you’re a CLI person like me) via the “System Settings” -> “Users and Groups” option on the Red Hat menu and do yourself a favour and create a non-root user, then use that to log into the desktop. Please don’t state falsehoods that you have to be root to use the desktop and surf the Net – it simply isn’t true.
You make some interesting points regarding the interaction between Novell/Ximian/Suse and their respective technologies.
What I think could be very interesting is for Novell to have a mini-skunkwork project to see what interesting things could possibly be done with making Ximian desktop, Mono, and Suse’s KDE interop with each other. I’m not talking about themes, I’m talking about things like how can the Ximian desktop stuff better integrate with KDE’s technology, such as DCOP, KParts. How can Mono fit into this. I have no idea what would come about. Maybe nothing, but it would be interesting for Novell to set up some informal brainstorming sessions between Suse/Ximinan/Mono.
I guess the question is whether Novell can, or is even inclined to, can possibly not unify the 2 desktops but let them interporate in new and interesting ways. I personally think that Mono with some KDE technology could produce some very interesting things.
I agree with Dave. I’ve used RH 5 through Fedora Core 1 and SUSE 6.* through 9.0. I think SUSE 9 is without a
doubt the better choice of the two for the desktop.
I will respond to my earlier post(s). Maybe I shouldn’t, but what the heck ….
I do think that Gartner is biased. Sorry. They put RH against SuSE and they do not discuss anything other than market share, user base, … What’s that for comparison. Apple only has 1.8% market share but they have the most polished unix-like OS. And why did Gartner not include Mandrake ? Too small ? They still are number one on Distrowatch.com, which I think is a very unbiased website, not ? My point was that, now that SuSE is a bit American, they put the two companies in a comparison. And it’s not a technical comparison. It’s a “who rules the market in the US”. The whole idea behind their setup is biased.
What I like to see in a comparison is what problems there are. I ran SuSE 8.2 Pro. One of the worst distros I’ve ever had for what I do. Eg. In KDE the Belgian keyboard is not functioning well. I cannot type the “<” and “>” character. Trust me, that’s hard for a HTML/XML/XSL developer like me …
Apache did not come with the right “make”, for me. Neither did Postgresql. Now that’s a shame. It leaves me with no other choice than to compile my own packages. That’s not what I expect from a “Pro” distro. I’ll give another example: what distro gives you the possibility to format a partition in a file system that supports ACL’s ? Is it because of the “freedom of choice” that they did not include it ?
Both Red Hat and SuSE alter the look of KDE so much to give it their own “look”. Why ? Leave it as it is. Same with directory locations. Everybody puts files in different places. Everytime you go to a different Linux machine, you have a complete new environment. Now that’s why Linux is still not widespread on the desktop. You can’t expect those Windows folks to switch from their “easy but very insecure and error prone” environment to our “stable, versatile and open” environment if basic things like a standardized look of applications are far from reality. You don’t want to tell them that some apps run the QT toolkit and some run the GTK toolkit and therefore look different. That’s silly in their eyes and they are so much right about that.
I hear people saying: “Yes, but SuSE 9.0 is much better”. Sorry, I bought 8.2. If the “next” version is better, I may as well switch back to Microsoft. They also assure me that most of the problems are fixed in the next version.
The reason why they’re matching these two distro’s is the Enterprise. Thats why Mandrake isn’t there. Distrowatch isn’t a good way to judge enterprise systems. There is no mandrake certifications, LSB? how many arch’s do they run on? how many ISV’s support them? They’re not known for stability. Almost went bankrupt, Might loose thier name, etc.
SuSe and Red Hat modifiy KDE on a visual level, they are made for hackers with cool glass themes and eye candy, busineses don’t want that. they want drab, boring and a unified look across both enviornments. They asked for it and SuSe/Red Hat gave them what they wanted since they’re the only ones who BUY distro’s these days.
Why do you want Redhat to leave KDE as it is. it is open source, and they are allowed to modify it, and they do. If you were a significant Redhat customer, your point of view would be much valued. But you are probably not, so what you like does not count. Yes, money talks.
What is it with all of these brain damaged comments about Americans buying American products and Eurupean (SUSE) vs America (RH)? SUSE is based in Europe, but is now owned by Novell. I realize that Utah is a weird place and maybe should be its own country, but for now it is still part of the USA.
To Bitterman: I do consider a unified look very important. Where do you think Windows and OSX got their success ? That is what made the “windowing computer environment” so interesting: they all look alike, they all run in the same environment and they all use the same tools (eg. no more printer drivers for each programs like it was under DOS). And unified is not the same as boring.
To Maynard: No, I use Slackware and OSX. Slack for the stability and the no bullshit approach and OSX because of all I said in my previous comments. Ever installed a program on OSX ? Even .tgz isn’t coming close to the ease. Ever installed FireWire on a portable under OSX ? Neither did I, it came standard with the OS.
If there’s no unified look nor a unified approach towards naming, desktops, … Linux will never be a decent competitor on the Desktop. Do not forget that it’s not “our” ICT world that decides on what a company runs, it’s boss and the secretary. And they have no interest in how easy you can change it, and that it’s legal to change it. They don’t want to hear about the differences between GTK and QT. That’s what interests us, but not them.
I was quite surprised by the gartner reading as I’d long stopped using Red Hat for being too corporate and use SuSE because it feels less corporate and more open.
Now, I don’t care about the source being open, I mainly just want the community and feel of the product to be open, and SuSE has felt much better at that. Thus the Novell aquisition is quite worrisome as it might make SuSE less open and into the corporate feel of Red Hat.
To Bitterman: I do consider a unified look very important. Where do you think Windows and OSX got their success ? That is what made the “windowing computer environment” so interesting: they all look alike, they all run in the same environment and they all use the same tools (eg. no more printer drivers for each programs like it was under DOS). And unified is not the same as boring.
I really don’t understand this. I use RH9 and SuSE 8.2 pro. Other than the main graphics, its all unified. there is no difference what so ever!
To Maynard: No, I use Slackware and OSX. Slack for the stability and the no bullshit approach and OSX because of all I said in my previous comments. Ever installed a program on OSX ? Even .tgz isn’t coming close to the ease. Ever installed FireWire on a portable under OSX ? Neither did I, it came standard with the OS.[i]
Very true. However I do not use eather of those and for me RH and SuSE its easy for me to install any software I want and hardware works right out of the box unlike windows where you have to require the drivers and even then it might not work right.
[i]If there’s no unified look nor a unified approach towards naming, desktops, … Linux will never be a decent competitor on the Desktop. Do not forget that it’s not “our” ICT world that decides on what a company runs, it’s boss and the secretary. And they have no interest in how easy you can change it, and that it’s legal to change it. They don’t want to hear about the differences between GTK and QT. That’s what interests us, but not them
That is interesting. But the fact is Linux is already unified. I also do not care about GTK or QT. I just want things to work and believe me in linux it works in windows it does not not matter what the version. No one has time to hack dll files or mess around with the registry. As for the unified look. Well winxp is quite different from all the other versions but linux no matter what it is your home directory will always be /home/yourname and your config files are always in /etc.