That is the problem. Unethical business behaviour is considered normal and gets a free pass. American corporations doing business in this fashion will continue to expire ‘lest they come up with external revenue to keep afloat.

Just the other day I was told off for refering to Ubuntu simply as Ubuntu and not Ubuntu Linux or even just Linux. Apparently “Linux” has more meaning to those not in the know? Flawed logic I think.

And I think that is what is being applied here. Novell has had a love hate relationship with Microsoft since before Linux was created. Why wouldn’t deal with Microsoft? Why does dealing with Microsoft mean any distribution has to die? Because Microsoft is an evil empire? No it’s not. It’s an American corporation doing business by the rules all big American corporations play by.

They do whatever they can to dominate a market and use that domination to beat everybody else into submission. Then hope and pray they get away with it. Then they buy everyone off and get ready for another round of the same.

Choice is a good thing. We need many strong Linux based OSs all with their strengths.

If you want to use RHELvX for no charge, you can probably come very very close by getting and installing the appropriate centos version for $0. And you don’t even have to create a free account before downloading.

Var-to-be, a lot of people reject partnering with Monopolysoft to the extent Novell has done. We don’t want one company leveraging its monopolies to dominate commercial Linux. That would make it more difficult for free Linux to remain competitive. Novell has chosen to partner with the wrong company. They value that relationship more than the relationship with the Linux community, and those two relationships are at odds. Microsoft has nothing but to lose from free Linux. Losing platform monopolies is not just losing marketshare but is also losing powerful market levers. Maybe Novell will change in a few years when their contract expires. Also, Novell is primarily a closed source company. They also didn’t open up Suse (add to the Linux ecosystem), they bought it (seized ownership of it). Microsoft needed a proxy to buy a Linux for them. Novell anticipated that need and has been delivering ever since: to embrace, extend, and extinguish.

Looks to me that Red Hat has already learned lots from Microsoft!

Now let the pointless bashing really get going!!!!

By-the-by, can anybody explain why a patch subscription for a single SLES10 system and up to 32 sockets and Xen sells for about $400 while patches for a RHEL5 box with the same capabilities sells for about $1,500? Is RHEL5 really about 4 times better that SLES10?

Also, can anybody show me how to easily download a copy of RHEL5 for evaluation without buying it? For SLES10 go to Novell’s web page, create a free account and download away!

Looks to me that Red Hat has already learned lots from Novell.

Let the pointless bashing continue.

“The market i talk about is having a central server product line that can make Windows, Apple and Linux distributions work in the same network enabling users to mingle and admins to care for the systems easily.”

Can’t disagree there, although Novell has to put its strategic hat on when dealing with Windows systems and ensure that they don’t get outflanked by new Microsoft software by ensuring that people want to move to Suse and Novell technology. That’s what happened with the whole Netware -> NT switch that went on. Microsoft supported Netware technology, made people want to switch to NT by making things far easier to set up and then cut off the air supply.

Alas, this flies right over the heads of Novell execs.

“Their stubborn refusal to support any other Linux than SUSE with clients hasnt really drawn in Linux users like flies either.”

That actually wouldn’t be so bad if there was something innovative in Suse that Novell was driving that would make people switch. The fact that you’re complaining that Novell won’t support anything else apart from Suse tells me that you don’t think so and shows what position they’re in. Red Hat certainly isn’t going out of its way to support Suse, but no one really seems to care.

As for SLES, I don’t really see the point in it. It’s yet another Linux distribution in the face of competition with Red Hat when to compete with Red Hat you have to invest smarter in open source technologies that will give you an advantage. SLES should be the new Netware replacement everyone can get excited about with open sourced features from Netware integrated into Linux and great managament tools that should enable it to compete beyond Red Hat and with Windows Server. SLES just diverts Novell’s efforts from where they should be concentrating them. As with Sun, Novell are a company that simply doesn’t know what it’s about even when hard code and functionality is sitting out there, already written, staring them in the face. The grains of sand are running out.

Are people really demanding Suse Linux? No they’re not. Much of Novell’s Suse sales are from Suse’s already established and dwindling position and the scraps from their Netware customers. Novell’s Suse sales are a drop in the ocean when compared with Red Hat. Demand for SLES is pretty exagerrated when you look at the figures.

Very sadly they fumbled bigtime on this market by stupidity unheard of bt going instead for an already pretty saturated and heavily fought for space in computing, the datacenter. Their stubborn refusal to support any other Linux than SUSE with clients hasnt really drawn in Linux users like flies either. If im stuck in a windows enviroment fighting for life getting out im sure as heck not about to lock myself into SLES/SLED and giving Novell the key.

Sometimes i wonder if Microsoft is pulling the strings 100% at Novell but then again never attribute to malice what can be described by utter incompetence.