Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our complaints have been heard!


http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/66068

Novell will continue to offer both KDE and Gnome, the only change will be that Gnome will now be the default desktop, the article is unclear if this is for all SuSE Linux products or just SLES and NLD. Eather way it seems that Novell has at least learned how to listen to their customers, hopefully they will be just as willing to listen to and act upon criticism in the future.

That is the current state of the Linux market. However Microsoft got where they are not on the server side, but on the workstation/desktop side of the world. There is far more money to be made on per-seat licenses for groupware clients/client access licenses, application licenses, and of course value-added items such as support and "maintenance"

Microsoft got into the server market not because it is such a big money maker for them (they dominated the market even prior to Windows NT's release) but to offer a COMPLETE package to make potential customers' choices easier. "Which server should we buy? Which office suite should we buy? What servers will work with Windows?" are all answered by "Windows NT/2K/2K3 and Exchange of course" because Office interoperates with Windows on the desktop and Exchange on the (Windows) server, and the look and feel is consitent, etc. - by using this strategy this enabled Microsoft to maintain its dominance on the desktop.

Now if Novell/SuSE were to offer the complete package (server AND desktop) and get say, Massachusetts, California, and much of the EU to buy into the Linux solution, and make the transition AWAY from Windows/Exchange/SQL Server to Linux easier for syadmins (remember: legacy DATA is far more valuable than any tangible asset or licensing fee) then you will see Linux growth absolutely explode, and as a by-product you will see hardware support and x.org performance rapidly improve.

See my point? By keeping KDE in both SLES and Novell Enterprise Linux (remember: some of those editions are marketed for BOTH the server AND the enterprise desktop) they are answering to market desires - and they can do this without splintering customers between Novell and Mandriva or Novell and Linspire, or in some cases avoid driving customers (like me) totally away from Novell and to Mandrake. Let the customer decide, and by offering BOTH Gnome AND SuSE, they have the potential to capture both markets. Personally I cannot stand the Gnome desktop (I know Gnome, but KDE has really grown on me. It used to be that I HATED KDE and liked Gnome), and users I've had try it require support and handholding whereas on KDE I can put even novices to work within a couple of minutes. I just need to tell them "instead of outlook, here's Thunderbird. Instead of MSIE, here's Firefox. Instead of M$ Word, here's Writer. Have fun!"

As it is I still don't fully trust Novell's current press releases so I am still downloading the latest Mandriva build and will be evaluting it on a desktop alongside SuSE, "just in case" they do decide to kill KDE - in the event that they do that I'll have an environment already preconfigured to be imaged to other workstations, along with scripts to migrate any data and config files which may be needed.

As a KDE user I think Suse 9.3 was the best. When I installed 9.3 and selected KDE, that's all that would be installed. Now with version 10.0 (currently testing) there is too much Gnome integration. Certian applications that I open or run have a Gnome appearance, or when I go to save a file a Gnome popup screen appears. If I wanted to see Gnome applications I would've selected them at install. Sorry, but IMO, Gnome is just butt ugly. I may just go back to 9.3 and stay there.

Some of this is just Hysteria. -- I've installed SLED and NO PROBS at all with KDE. OK you have to select it at install time but what's wrong with that -- if you want stuff where you just run xxx.exe then stick to Windoze.

SLED 10 is probably the BEST distro I've EVER used and it makes Vista look and feel like real 100% Bovine Scatology.

Linux has to appeal to a wider audience these days and SLED does it perfectly.

For more "Geeky" people who really enjoy tinkering with their systems you've still got Debian.

For users who just need to install and run --well I'm happy with SLED 10.

For some people the change from "New Innovative" to "Stable Mature" isn't always pleasant -- but it doesn't mean that the product is total BS.

I enjoyed commercial I.T 35 years ago when we were a new industry and could more or less do anything.

Today I wouldn't go anywhere near an I.T shop -- basically loads of management / change control and people totally lacking any sort of creativity. Probably the only communication you'd get is from people texting each other on mobile phones. You certainly wouldn't get any sensible conversation as the guys in the service area would all be listening to really cacophonous "music" ? on their Ipods.

I still think SUSE is one of the best distros around and !'m sure novell won't kill it.

They are just going down the route that a lot of I.T shops are following.

Perhaps the "Non Geeks" should reclaim the I.T depts again.

Cheers

-k

What's wrong with gnome?

It's not as bad as people say. I guess there will be fanboys no matter where you go.

If people think SUSE is a bad distro, try Fedora Core 5 (which also defaults Gnome). SUSE is far better than Fedora from my past experiences with Fedora. I have not tried Ubuntu or Mandriva. Yet I like YaST's simplisity, To me SUSE 10.1 is a great alternative to Windows if you don't play games or do heavy video encoding (AVI synth, TMPEnc, Virtul Dub).