Is anybody else getting the feeling that SuSE is slowly being killed off by Novell?
I use the RSS Feed for Novell and it's to me quite obvious that SuSE personnel is being pushed out the door.
Gnome is being pushed while KDE seems to be slowly made irrelevant.
Zen is still not working properly after all this time, I just did a huge update download via YOU but Zen after multiple refresh's showed no updates availeble.

Novell is doing some great stuff for Linux, but at the same time is going Corporate all the way while leaving the average Linux User/Enthusiast behind in the Dust.

It looks like that they just wanted all the Software and Corporate Customers from SuSE and intergrate it into their own suit.

That's how it works. There really is no such thing as "free lunch"..but you have choices. Novell just has to make money, and if it means dumping some piece of software, then so be it.

Also remember that the top 2 senior Novell managers just got pushed out of the door and maybe things will get better. Wonder where the Suse people went?

probably to join RedHat -- this used to be the nr 1 distribution until they went all corporate.

I think however that if SLES / SLED 10 turns out OK then you won't need to upgrade very often. Most people want to USE their computers not tinker around with the OS.

KDE will still in any case be "User Installable" so I wouldn't worry here -- certainly not in the short term.

If all else fails you could always try VISTA I suppose now Billsy is leaving M$.

Cheers

-K

I hope that you are wrong alfredh but I think you might be right.

A very quick correction about the following:
Gnome is being pushed while KDE seems to be slowly made irrelevant.Please check the open suse repository site you will find that KDE is being updated on a daily basis for versions 9.3 10.0 and 10.1.
The Main Open SuSE Site
http://software.opensuse.org/downloa...sitories/KDE:/
A mirror of main repositories.
http://http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/...SE_Linux_10.1/
You will also find that developers for distributions of Linux Fedora 5 and Mandravia and SuSE are being hosted as part of Open SuSe software packages and projects. I offer a different observation Novell is trying to get Linux more standardized in particular for KDE which is the best visual alternative to Windows of any flavor. In the new KDE Fade and Hot tip effects are like windows. The new automount and media detection features ( with choice of Applications to use) is very Windows look alike.
The new Zen Updater is an attempt to have an automatic update feature which has user and not just (ROOT) control. The project Team for Zen/Rug are working very hard to make Zen a parallel to Windows Update (Automatic Update and Notifications). The effort I see occurring is making Linux easier to use for a first time user or a past Windows user. The up and comming changes are going to be rapid because Novell has a January 2007 gap between Beta Windows Vista and Retail release. So SuSE Linux is being changed and sometimes changes come easy or hard but in the long run we and the community will benefit. As a suggestion check out the FOSDEM presentations about who and how both Open SuSE and retail versions are being developed and maintained. RSS feeds are a bit like third hand gossip, you can not get a full picture with out having all pieces of how the conversation was started.

I don't think Suse are trying to standardise KDE at all. KDE used to be the default in Suse, but GNOME is now the default. It is also now impossible to install KDE on Suse without installing lots of GTK/GNOME packages because they build some KDE packages with dependencies on GNOME stuff. Also in SLES 10, I noticed that they have rewritten many tools that used to be strictly QT/KDE with GTK. To me this shows that Novell is indeed standardising on GNOME and not KDE although the OpenSuse project is kind enough to provide updated packages for both KDE and GNOME.

Well, the truth is that I think so, at least as an individual user.

When I knew of the Novell involvement I partly agreed in that it was going to be good for the global support of the project, but then begun the news about people going, "migration to Gnome" (I don't think they're going to drop KDE, but I think the best support will go to Gnome), etc. I expected Novell support to be more global, not tryng to change many things, but I was wrong.

And, from my very own point of view, the Armaggedon came with 10.1. I was a happy 10.0 user, but then came 10.1 and, trully, I couldn't install it in any of my PC's! The installer always failed somehow (I've tried 1 laptop and 2 desktops with very different hardware). In other circumstances, with a more specific and clear error, I'd have tried harder, but with such catastrophe now I'm a happy Kubuntu user (although I use Debian & Gentoo too). I think they wanted 10.1 to be a demo of what a big company "Microsoft-like" (as Novell is in some aspects), can do with a good O.S. to customize it, and it seems that in my opinion they could have left most things as they were. It wouldn't have been so "pretty & spectacular", but some users like me would still be SuSE users.

SuSE always worked very well, but one thing that has always annoyed me was its lack of "standardness"; I mean, SuSE follows it's own "standards" in many aspects, at least in things like software location, configuration files, package naming schemes, etc.... OK, it works (or at least worked) very well, but it's very frustrating reading books and articles about Linux which always says "do this, except in SuSE which is that". I'm one of those users who periodically (less each time) changes from one distro to another (using always KDE), keeping my home directory in its own partition; well, there's always some adjustments to be done... but specially with SuSE it's a complete mess.

My last conclusion was that I simply can't stick with SuSE, beacause it's more and more different to "linux" each time. And it's a shame, because using it is very nice.

Gnome? KDE? - what's weird is that the projects SUSE is sponsoring (Banshee, Beagle, Ximain stuff, the new menu and the Compiz utilities) are all GNome/Gtk not KDE/QT based but Gnome is still at 2.12 and KDE is 3.53 and current. Not sure what this says but there a disconnect here.

Pesonally if they mess up 10.2 as bad as 10.1 and if KDE isn't given equal footing with SUSE then I, like Wloxen, will probably move to Kubuntu (or Mandrivia).

I came from kubuntu back to Suse Linux. Kde in Suse is a billion times better then kde in ubuntu

They will always have kde so don't worry about it. Right now they are focusing on the gnome desktop, but I'm sure that they are not going to drop kde, I want to see the computer thing in kde, that'll make me go back

Looks like all the KDE refugees are switching to Slackware and Mandriva.

FWIW and IMHO, shake up at Novell is a direct result of the Ximian acquisition. Rather than admit they made a huge mistake, upper management will fire everyone that disagrees with them and drive the company into the ground instead.

gnome need a face lift badly in Suse which is why alot of this is happening, Novell is now moving towards gnome, but as they stated both are going to get loving, kde 4 is going to be coming out so we should see some kde loving in opensuse 10.2 ( I hope)

Any theories why Suse, a Gnome focused distro, is so behind in its supported version of Gnome ?

This 10.1 is turning more and more into a mess as more as I do with it.
zmd now downloads half the updates and then decides it's no good.
You tells me that there are no updates.
RPM installs have gone wonky with what ever GUI installer you try to use and needs to be forced through the command line.
Kontact still falls ass over head for no apparent reason and sporadicle, but doesn't loose anything and just a simple re-start is required.
Kontact has been doing this since 9.3

Thats because of stability.
Suse 10.2 will have Gnome 2.16 but I'm quite sure that they will stick with kde 3.5.x .

KDE4 will be released "when its done", so I just can't see how they could include kde4 in the next version. Although the first technical preview is scheduled for August, there wont be enough time to test and ensure high quality and stability.