[Gllug] Long term Opensuse (forked: reputation in l-t)

[David L Neil]

Juergen Schinker wrote:
> John Hearns wrote:
>> Now that at last we have started to discuss Linux (*)
>> worth pointing out the discussions on Long Term Support for OpenSUSE -
>> there isn;t an equivalent to CentOS in SuSe.
>> (*) then again, I am waging a one-man war against the forces of
>> darkness which are Debian and her devil-spawn outrider Ubuntu. Soon
>> you will look back upon flame wars on libertarianism as mere sparks.
> 
> Nice try to start a flamewar try harder

+1

So to add to the collection of list-foibles, why don't I attempt a 
thread fork/hi-jack?

> regarding Suse; they died on that day when Novell bought them
> i remember it like it was yesterday and it just doesn't make sense

They didn't die - at least not commercially. Novell's financial results 
show that their Microsoft alliance has generated more for them then any 
other division of their business.


> J

...and so back to the list's predilection for idealism:

I'm a comparative newcomer to Linux, having spent five or six years 
introducing myself to FOSS servers and thereafter OpenOffice etc desktop 
applications before daring myself into a 'pure' Linux environment. Thus 
I started with SuSE/OpenSuSE only about five years back, simply because 
they were at the Trade Shows giving away CD-ROMs and an (unused) offer 
of initial-period techSpt (free to someone they saw as 'influential') 
along with a set of reassuring manuals. (yes, some of us do read, even 
read first!!!???)

It was about a year after the Novell-Microsoft announcement, when I next 
needed to build an in-house server, that I bit the bullet of comparing 
Linux Distros, and fell on my feet - I consider (he says, modestly) by 
choosing CentOS.

More recently I tried rebuilding my desktop with Debian, then Ubuntu, 
then Mint, and other relatives (?spawn) but despite the best efforts of 
good people on this list, failed to configure the (old) video 
successfully and alighted on Fedora instead. Thus frustration eventually 
meant logic and enquiry lost to familiarity and time-desperation!?

Agreed, the Nov-M$ idealistic stance was something of a spur, but in my 
'looking around' I found misgivings about the 'politics' of virtually 
every distro - in some ways all that is needed is one person with a 
high-enough horse (or soap-box)... and in recent months there have even 
been questions and threats about the CentOS 'ownership', passwords, 
etc... (just to show that I'm not a distro-bigot even if we are 
discussing 'religion')

So to fan some flames:
wasn't there an idealistic/flame-war about a major change in 
policy-direction at Red Hat a number of years ago, which led to todays 
situation of a paid and supported RHEL (distro, desktop, and configured 
servers...), CentOS (community or commercial), and Fedora (desktop and 
server)? How concerned are we/should we be today, about such a 
reputation as RedHat may have gained 'then'? Has the Linux/FOSS 
community grown, evolved, and enjoyed benefit as a result?

Regards,
=dn
(partly tongue-in-cheek, partly an enquiring mind)
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug