On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, Kevanf1 wrote:
On 09/11/05, Bjorn Tore Sund
wrote: If I don't get a guarantee from SuSE/Novell (yes, I'm using other channels as well) that the SuSE KDE modifications and configurations will stay maintained at at least the same level as today, we're most likely dropping OpenSuSE and consequently SLES and ZenWorks. We have our final meeting tomorrow morning, we _might_ decide to just postpone our decision if I it seems likely that the guarantee is just a bit late. But sometime next week the analysis process will be restarted and RedHat/Fedora is a likely winner because of commercial software support - and then other alternatives for client management open up as well and will be looked closer at.
Panicking? No. Frustrated? Yes. We don't have a problem, but would much rather this nonsense hadn't started to appear. But Novell is doing their best to loose business, and though we're only one small university I can't imagine that we're the only ones taking a step back to consider alternatives. SuSE's big advantage has been that they're _different_, the more like RedHat they try to be the less reason is there to choose SuSE over RedHat.
-BT --
I'm sorry Bjorn, but this does not make sense. Red Hat/Fedora have Gnome as the default already so why move to them when you already know the SuSE system. How can SuSE be getting more like RH/Fedora anyway? SuSE is not based on RH (as many other distros are) it was initially based on the Slackware distro and is now sufficiently different to warrant being termed a distro in its own right rather than a fork of course. I just do not see how it can get to be like RH/Fedora. Unless I've missed something here...
The one thing you're missing is what I didn't say; we are in the process of standardizing and centralizing our linux admin from having three mid-sized departments run their own client admin (using CentOS/RHEL, Fedora, and SuSE, respectively) into _one_ central system running one of these for all three departments and quite a few others. Redhat is far superior to SuSE in one major sphere: the support from commercial software products. From the sysadmin view, and especially when using a client management system as opposed to the manual single-machine tools, the two are essentially identical. Thus the user's experience becomes a central deciding point. And expecially as long as we judge KDE to be superior to Gnome, and SuSE's KDE setup to be superior to any others, _that_ is the reason to go for SuSE. If the SuSE KDE setup deteriorates we're better off with a default KDE setup, which can be done on any Linux distribution. At that point what remains is that Redhat currently does a better Gnome setup (and this is likely to stay the situation for a while, until SuSE gets its act together) and having a good alternative for users to choose is good - and the above mentioned support from third party commercial software vendors. How they are getting similar? The OpenSuSE "community-driven" silliness, even though they _know_ how long it took before the Fedora project got its act together. And now the standardisation on Gnome, where Redhat has several years head start, to the probable detriment of their KDE support. Bjørn -- Bjørn Tore Sund Phone: (+47) 555-84894 Stupidity is like a System administrator Fax: (+47) 555-89672 fractal; universal and Math. Department Mobile: (+47) 918 68075 infinitely repetitive. University of Bergen VIP: 81724 Support: system@mi.uib.no Contact: teknisk@mi.uib.no Direct: bjornts@mi.uib.no