Yet another openSUSE, Novell, Microsoft, and Attachmate topic

I recently decided to give openSUSE 11.4 a try. Being a fan of KDE, it only made sense to try the distro that many people claim offers the best KDE experience. I've always been reluctant to try openSUSE. The main reason, and some may find this silly, is the whole Novell/Microsoft patents deal, followed by the aquisition of Novell by Attachmate (in a deal which we all know MicroSoft had a hand in).

I know that many people don't hold the whole Boycott Novell movement (and it's associated website techrights.org) in a high regard. But, I'm wondering, what do you think? Is having Novell as a corporate sponsor enough to make you avoid the green lizard distro, or should openSUSE be judged on the merits of it's features alone (as someone on another forum who uses openSUSE put it, he "separates politics from technology" and uses openSUSE because he believes it's the best Linux offering out there). After all, openSUSE is, at the end of the day, a community distro....

howdy almiga

Well... this question will have varied opinions.... Opensuse certainly is a Quality Distro.... I can think of many improvements it needs still... But it is definately one
of the Best Distros out there....

I dunno man... I have a bad taste in my mouth knowing all about the Novell/Attachmate/Microsoft Deal... And it makes me not want to use Suse. Maybe I am paranoid lol, but I see Suse going down and Forked eventually. I do not trust the future of Suse knowing a Consortium of Microsoft (attachmate) is now in charge of the project.... Something is up, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish perhaps? And use the aquired patents to attack the Opensource community in the future? Who knows.... but where a Corporation with a history of not having the best intentions at heart who buys out competition and Cut it off at the Knees has a Steering Wheel in a Project that I like.... It only makes me Think the Worse....

So for me, I won't use OpenSuse but I do review it and try not to be biased.... I talk about how good it is often.... But I don't need Suse....

That's my opinions anyways

cheers

The only thing that turned me off openSUSE was YAST, but horses for courses I guess.

I thought the whole Novell deal had ended or could no longer be a threat or something...I dunno, need to do my homework on that one, but could have sworn I read something about it on the Fedora forums.

You this has been bothering me a lot the past couple days. I only stumbled upon this little tidbit of Fud a couple days ago. Up until then I was living in paradise. I had pulled this laptop from under the bed at my parents house. Nothing special a Dell Inspiron 1501. It was my sisters who had recently bought a MacBook Pro so this computer was all but forgotten. I had a 300gb 7200rpm hard drive and 2 gigs ram in a broken Compaq so I swiped the Dell and put the hd and ram in it. Then I set about thinking what to do with it? Having used Suse in the past I found openSuse 11.4, downloaded the 64 bit version and wiped the hd clean and installed. My decision was helped by the fact that no 64bit drivers seemed to exist for this computer for WIn7, which I was considering. In the end it was an all "free" computer, and I love it. Opensuse runs like a dream on her. I have always loved this distrobution, and I have tried many others. This one just feels right and fits me perfectly. So what do I do? The Microsoft connection is really bugging me and I've set about researching other distrobutions but I've found I don't want anything else on this computer.

I considered FreeBsd or PCBsd but I've tried those in the past as well and just don't want to contend with the difficulties of using bsd. Everything works splendidly on this computer now so I can't make any changes. Even though I do like the Freebsd Mascot very much...

I guess I'll just stick it out with what I have. I have downloaded PCBsd and LinuxMint Debian though and I happen to have another hard drive so I am considering swapping the hd's and trying on those and see how they do that way. But truly I don't want to change.
I don't care for Microsoft. Never have.

hi michaelp
welcome to the forums if this is you are new can't remember the nick so maybe you are?

anyways... OpenSuse is a fine fine fine distro.... one of, if not... the Best quality Linux Distro out there.... The politics of it does bother me too... but then again, nothing stopping you from using it.... if worse comes to worse and it gets too tainted by microsoft you can always switch if you don't like the direction it is headed.... Mandriva 2011 comes pretty close to suse's awesomeness though may be an option in the future.... as for me......... ArchLinux alllll the way

kaddy wrote:hi michaelp
welcome to the forums if this is you are new can't remember the nick so maybe you are?

anyways... OpenSuse is a fine fine fine distro.... one of, if not... the Best quality Linux Distro out there.... The politics of it does bother me too... but then again, nothing stopping you from using it.... if worse comes to worse and it gets too tainted by microsoft you can always switch if you don't like the direction it is headed.... Mandriva 2011 comes pretty close to suse's awesomeness though may be an option in the future.... as for me......... ArchLinux alllll the way

Thanks man. Yeah I was just watching some youtube reviews on stuff since I found out about this connection and so I figured since I talk so much may as well join. I agree, I think I will hang in with suse for a while I just love it, and hope for the best. I'm just a dude who was a Mac-user for many many years but I don't want to pay the high price of admission these days. Plus, I reasoned, OS X is good but I get more of what I want out of Linux. Linux makes me want to learn and discover.

Actually OS X was a slug for a long time for me on a few G4's but I never made the leap over to intel with them so maybe it's gotten better..but that's another story

Yeah, having had an Apple G4 running OSX I can attest to the sluggishness. However, from what I can tell, the newer machines like the Intels, it runs very smooth and fast.

However I'm just not a huge fan of the Mac OSX interface...and that mouse acceleration. The mouse movement drives me crazy. I think I'm probably the only one who complains about that though lol.