I've installed Kubuntu on some of my machines, to test out an
alternative. So far, I'm fairly pleased.
Now, why would I do this?
Watching Novell for the last couple of years has been almost as much
fun as watching SCO, and didn't require me to keep a lawyer on
retainer. :-)
First they but Ximian, and shortly after that SUSE. Ximian is well
known for it's desktop integration on GNOME, while SUSE is known as
the (my opinion) leader for KDE desktop linux.
Interesting combination.
Then, to my astonishment, they GPL'd YAST. I was pleased and
impressed. I perceived this as a commitment to OSS.
But this month has made me unsure if I want to stay. Novell is laying
off so many people, and key SUSE people are leaving, while key Ximian
people are staying.
I think SUSE may be sinking, and the decision to downgrade KDE to an
option is merely emblematic of much deeper issues, which I will not
pretend to understand, but they worry me.
In contrast, Ubuntu is getting increasingly excited about KDE, and
seems to have a stable professional developer community, as well as an
exploding volunteer community.
Sounds more tempting every day.
--andy
On 11/10/05, Kevin Donnelly
On Thursday 10 November 2005 18:34, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
It's very sad that Dr Mantel has gone, and I also salute him for his work on SuSE down the years. However, the above sentence is not entirely fair - after all, Novell has opensourced all of SUSE for the first time, and started opensuse (it could be argued that this should have been done about 3 years ago, and Novell didn't own the company then).
SUSE has always been open source.. even yast was open source.
Yes, I should have said "Novell has GPLed all of SUSE" to be unambiguous.
--
Pob hwyl / Best wishes
Kevin Donnelly
www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rhydd yn Gymraeg www.cymrux.org.uk - Linux Cymraeg ar un CD
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