- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
It’s become clear to many that Red Hat’s recent missteps with CentOS and the availability of RHEL source code indicate that it’s fallen from its respected place as “the open organization.” SUSE seems to be poised to benefit from Red Hat’s errors. We connect the dots.
You must log in or # to comment.
Also SUSE: OpenSUSE needs to change their name because we say so
There’s always been the risk of confusion and openSUSE project seemed to have understood that SUSE could disallow the name at any moment. A name change does make sense for both. Especially now that even Leap might be distancing itself from SLE and whatnot.
A name change does make sense for both. Especially now that even Leap might be distancing itself from SLE and whatnot.
Agreed, but GeekOS or whatever it was they had on that oSC slide … Cheesus, they can do better than that.
Yeah, I get the mascot’s name is Geeko, so maybe that is where they’re getting GeekOS. But I think I read that the mascot has to go together with the name anyway.
Cheesus, they can do better than that
On recent performance, no they can’t. I mean, they had the chance to use Driftwood and went with Slowroll.
There is no “current proposal” at this point.
What about the proposal to just drop the name openSUSE with no replacement? And let each distro just be called Tumbleweed, Leap, Aeon, etc.
That could be a branding strategy, I guess, but the community project behind it will still need a name of some kind obviously. Unless they only want to show up at conferences/have a website url etc as “the project whose name shall not be mentioned”.
Go the Prince route, “the project formerly known as OpenSUSE”.
There’s always been the risk of confusion
A name change does make sense for both
Then make SUSE become ClosedSUSE. It couldn’t be easier.
To be fair, OpenSUSE is the only project with a name like that, so it makes some sense that they’d want it changed.
There’s no OpenRedHat, no OpenNovell, no OpenLinspire, etc.Maybe they should go with OpenGecko or OpenChameleon
OpenGeeko?
-
OpenLinux
-
OpenUnix
-
OpenJDK
-
OpenWatcom
-
OpenWebOS
-
OpenVMS
-
OpenOffice
-
OpenTF, briefly.
I think OpenNovell was a thing too.
Thing is, ‘Open-’ was the prefix for a LOT of derivations about 20 years ago. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of any.
Not at all what my point was. There’s indeed plenty of Open-something (or Libre-something) projects under the sun, but no free/open spins of commercial projects named simply “Open<Trademarked company name / commercial offering>”.
Definitely getting into pedantry now, sorry - but OpenSuse isn’t strictly a free version of Suse. Like RHEL, there are some proprietary and commercially restricted software in Suse that doesn’t reappear - verbatim - in OpenSuse.
And it’s still entirely unrelated to my point, since SUSE will remain the trademark in question regardless of what’s actually contained in OpenSUSE.
But yes, the free/open-source spins of things tend to have somewhat differing content compared to the commercial offering, usually for licensing or support reasons.
E.g. CentOS (when it still was a real thing)/AlmaLinux/etc supporting hardware that regular RHEL has dropped support for, while also not distributing core RedHat components like the subscription manager.
- OpenLook
- OpenMotif
- OpenTransport on MacOS
- SCO OpenServer
- HP OpenMail
- HP OpenView
You couldn’t throw a ball without hitting something branded as “Open” in that era.
-
LibreLinux
FreeSystemd
Debian Stable.
It’s always the answer to "what distro do I want to use when I care about stability and support-ability.
And, unlike CentOS, it can’t be legally taken over by a corporate entity and changed into something entirely different. Debian is owned by Debian.
Maybe just not for corporate enterprise that wants phone and tech support? unless Debian has an Enterprise vendor? The PLM systems and other enterprise level software are certified on SUSE and RHEL, personally I haven’t seen Debian listed anywhere.
I know at least of Freexian. But also, Ubuntu tends to cover the “Like Debian, but with enterprise support” niche.
In my homelab I have Debian VMs originally set up with Debian 6 in 2011 which were upgraded another 6 major releases to now Debian 12 over the years. When I think about Debian I always get a very warm cozy feeling.
As a user I wouldn’t use debian. Server yes, workstation, no.
How come? I’m using it on a laptop now, and on quite a few servers. It does both things pretty well now.
Because it’s not updated often enough. Fedora is stable and up to date. Especially fedora atomic has a huge added value compared to debian.
For some, that’s a benefit
Stable means different things in different contexts.
Debian being stable is like RHEL being stable. You’re not jury talking about “doesn’t crash”, you’re talking about APIS, behaviours, features and such being assured not to change.
That’s not necessarily a good thing for a general purpose desktop, but for an enterprise workstation or server, yes.
So it’s not so much that Debian would replace Fedora, it’s the Debian would replace RHEL or CentOS. For a Fedora equivalent, there’s Ubuntu and the like.
Fair enough, it’s good that there’s choice.
This article reads like a press release from SUSE.
No because the caption under the first image says that SUSE’s mascot is a ‘gecko named Geeko’ – which cannot be farther from the truth, for it is a Chameleon named Geeko, that is the mascot of SUSE. Aye.
This seems like a PR release and has zero proof or data in the article to back itself up.
Yep. I’ve seen nothing of the sort in the wild. Still Ubuntu and RHEL/Centos/Rocky/AMZ2 in the DC almost exclusively. The only things I’ve seen making a few inroads for practical applications are CachyOS and Clear Linux.
Didn’t SUSE just ask openSUSE to change its name?
Mmm, maybe. “Joining the dots” also can be read as “taking a lot of bad feeling about X, and some good activity about Y and exaggerating both”
EL is pretty dominant still, although much of that seems to be Rocky/Alma rather than RHEL, but there’s no way to get real numbers.
What I have seen is a lot of uptick in Debian and Ubuntu servers. We are moving away from EL towards Debian now because of what we perceive as ongoing instability in the EL ecosystem caused by Redhat. Our business depends on a reliable Linux OS so we’re doing the maths.
Strange, I’ve not really seen that. Where I work we’ve just transitioned to RHEL. And Rocky/Alma are nowhere near as popular as RHEL.
Interesting, thanks. Those I’ve spoken to moved from Centos to Rocky when that was killed, and I know of more that moved to Debian.
Rocky Linux and possibly Alamalinux are the future if openSUSE is anything to go by
Rocky doesn’t support the range or products needed to be “the” enterprise suite.
Heck you could even go Liberty Linux and have the same bins as Rock but support under SUSE, plus k8s, plus update management, plus security tools, plus k8s multi cluster, plus some ai thing to convince investors you are doing something with it.
Like, and all that’s great, but honestly still not “enough” all under one roof for some enterprise costumers who are just looking to turn a problem into an expense.
Alma has been good for me the past year or so
I mean use Rocky all the time. Its good for me as a Dev and engineer. Its just not what I would spend a lot of time trying to convince management to spend money on for support and such.
Context ? I’m out of the loop.
OpenSUSE isn’t enterprise friendly for a many reasons. It lacks the features of rhel like systems and the simplicity of Debian. It somehow manages to be more complex and confusing than both
OpenSUSE isn’t enterprise friendly for a many reasons.
Isn’t SLE targeted towards enterprise anyways?
It lacks the features of rhel like systems and the simplicity of Debian. It somehow manages to be more complex and confusing than both
I’m by no means an expert, but I don’t recognize this. Would you be so kind to elaborate?
wow you are anti opensuse bullshit is so tiresome, first time I am thinking about blocking someone on lemmy, congrats.
Chill out you don’t need to take it personally. I just wouldn’t use based on my experience
Am I living under a rock? because I’ve never heard of Rocky and Almalinux lol
Two direct continuations of CentOS aiming for full RHEL compatibility
Yes. Is it moist under there?
They are enterprise server oriented
If you care at all about Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS, yes. See the Dec 2020 announcement. https://blog.centos.org/2020/12/future-is-centos-stream/
Not to be confused with OpenSUSE…
I actually use a decade old version of this to control a very expensive machine at work which is simultaneously surreal and validating of all the time I
wastedspent learning linux from my teens onward
To be honest, their demand that OpenSUSE rebrand left a bad taste in my mouth. I get the logic behind it, but the time for that passed a long time ago (probably about 15 years ago).
their demand that OpenSUSE rebrand
Slight changing of the tone, there. They have formally requested the change, not demanded.
Maybe that will follow, I can’t read the future, but it’s not the case today.
I mean yes they did “formally request” it, but given the power dynamic between a FOSS project and a large technology company, openSUSE is not in a position where they could possibly refuse. So is there a difference between a request and a demand?
If there’s no requirement, maybe openSUSE will just formally politely refuse to change names
I am sure it is a requirement really. Who owns the SUSE trademark?
In that case why would it be a bad thing to change the name to something else?
It has “become clear”. Has it?
Red Hat contributes more to Open Source than pretty much anybody. Certainly more than SUSE. That seems self-evident. If you want to debate, bring receipts.
As per the article, SUSE gets most of its money from SAP. SAP was founded by a bunch of ex-IBM people in Germany. They make IBM seem like cowboys.
The new SUSE CEO is ex Red Hat. Again, according the the article, the hope was that he would bring some of the Red Hat “open source magic” but SUSE has proven too “corporate”. Not exactly supporting their own argument there.
I am not close enough to the situation to know, but I doubt SUSE is taking over anything from Red Hat soon. RHEL is so far ahead that they have multiple distros trying to be “alternate” suppliers of RHEL by offering compatible distros. SUSE themselves are doing that now. If the world is looking to SUSE, why isn’t anybody trying to clone SUSE Enterprise?
SUSE is making some smart moves, given that they are the underdog. But let’s not confuse that with SUSE pulling ahead of Red Hat.
To be blunt…
Redhat contributes a huge amount to the community.
The only ones who think they’re misstepping or whatever are just making noise and likely aren’t even using RHEL.
I don’t think people realise exactly how far their contributions go for usability, and getting rid of Redhat of actually a really bad thing for Linux.
I’d even argue, the only people complaining about this likely don’t contribute anything to Linux anyway…
The only thing they did is stop oracle pulling their repo, rebranding and selling support slightly cheaper.
I disagree with you. You seem keen to insult people who might hold an alternative opinion, so no doubt you’ll attack me as well.
Redhat did far more than just stymie Oracle. That you’re saying that suggests you’re either deliberately ignoring the facts (Ending CentOS 8 7 years early with no prior announcement, being massively disrespectful to the volunteer CentOS maintainers and support staff), deliberately paywalling source deliberately to target all rebuilders, not just Oracle, generally being amateurish and entitled dicks to the community through their official communications and so on) - or you simply don’t know.
About the only thing you say that is correct, is that Redhat do contribute a lot to FOSS, even now. That deserves respect, but it gets harder to do that at a personal level each time they do something simultaneously dumb and selfishly corporate. A lot of people have given Redhat a lot of space and stayed quiet out of respect of their history. Maybe they are right to, but the direction they’re heading doesn’t look healthy to me.
Half of what you’re writing isn’t really true.
You’re likely assuming a lot of that.
Everyone knows that Oracle was the reason. Sorry, but they basically bragged that they stole the latest rhel source code and added an unbreakable kernel. And they purposely targeted Redhats customers with support by stealing their work.
In other words, their only other choice was to basically close shop… Oracle has been screwing them for years,
Also, sorry, but is it disrespectful when a company drops a project? We could make that same comment about every project. Also, CentOS is open source, as you said, so anyone can download it . They didn’t.
You’re also likely assuming they’re not pouring a huge amount of resources into it too
The perfect current example of rhel improving Linux is pipewire. They are literally unfucking Linux one component at a time in large chunks. It’s insane that people here are treating them so badly.
In fact, the community has no problems mistreating Linux developers over tiny things, which is why developers like myself which have been badly attacked in the past have stopped contributing
Half of what you’re writing isn’t really true.
'tis, you know.
Also, sorry, but is it disrespectful when a company drops a project? We could make that same comment about every project. Also, CentOS is open source, as you said, so anyone can download it . They didn’t.
Dropped a project? It wasn’t actually their project. I think you’re missing some history there. CentOS was a distro started by Greg and Rocky entirely separate from RHEL and ran for many years. Redhat took over CentOS through methods that may be seen as underhand until they had sufficient seats and influence over the Board to have control of it, and then they took/stole the CentOS name. CentOS Linux is an example of a FOSS project that got taken over by a corporate entity, and then killed. (Anyone heard of embrace, extend, extinguish before?) Now CentOS only exists as CentOS Stream, which is repositioned upstream of RHEL and is a staging area/testbed between Fedora and RHEL. Redhat say it’s not suitable for production use, so nobody other than testers uses it, afaik.
To my eye, Red Hat’s “direction” has not changed since they formed the Fedora Project to begin with ( the first attempt at keeping RHEL and their “no cost” options distinct ). Attempt number two was the creation of CentOS Stream. Now it is the way they manage RHEL SRPMS. No change in direction. No change in intent. No overall change in their behaviour.
Redhat have done a lot for Linux in the past. And that will likely continue for some time yet. But they have done some seriously questionable things ever since IBM bought them out. I don’t like the direction they seem to be heading in as withmany of IBM products.
Is there a “questionable thing” other than your views on CemtOS? I do not watch them super closely but I do not recall anything else.
The lost my trust when they blocked the ability to share the source code
But you probably trust them for every other project like pipewire and such?
In practice, Linux is that it is today thanks to Redhat.
They don’t own pipewire, samba or any other community project. They just help fund and develop them
Pipewire is developed by a Redhat employee… A lot of projects are including policykit… No they don’t own it, and yeah, they’re all open source and are freely used by the community
From my experience with development, a lot of these projects primarily succeed because they have a lot of backing. Also, someone needs to start them off, and a lot of these projects are also started by redhat
They do not own it because of their commitment to not just Open Source but ironically the GPL. So the large number of projects they have founded and the larger number of projects are the force behind are not “owned” by them.
They could have “owned” a tonne of the software almost every Linux user uses ( including Guix and Debian ).
This is precisely why it sounds so wrong to my ears when talk about Red Hat as above. Few facts. Lots of name calling.
Linux is that it is today thanks to Redhat.
Mmm, maybe - but only if you allow that the same can be said for the tens of thousands of other companies and individuals who have contributed.
Absolutely it can.
But Redhat is a huge contributor
The biggest threat that Linux faces isn’t from Microsoft or other companies. Over the past 30 years, I’ve noticed it is actually from the community. I’ve seen so many cases where the community blows things out of proportion and scares off developers. It sucks. Linux and open source would be so much more successful if we didn’t constantly make open source toxic for companies
Poor people like Lennart Poettering get shat on constantly too. He could get a much better paying job
Even right now… VSCode. It’s open source and MIT. People are STILL crapping on Microsoft and saying stuff like “oh wait for the enshittification”, instead of thanking them, or encouraging them for more
It’s bonkers… There’s so much negative reinforcement out there that it’s scaring people away
You are right.
It’s human nature emboldened by freedom, of course. Codes of Practice help, but can’t change the freedom that comes from entitlement and anonymity.
But on balance, there’s an awful lot of genuine people doing good, respectfully and politely.
What other company or individual can the same be said of?
He did not say “shared a two-line bug fix one time”. The claim is that Red Hat is almost uniquely important in the Open Source ecosystem. Their source code contributions and / or the number of significant project that they have founded are evidence of this.
Can you name even a single company with the same impact? You certainly cannot name tens of thousands.
Often, when somebody moves the goal posts to avoid addressing an argument head on, it is to intentionally mislead. I hope that is not the case here.
Thing is, the last time I saw under the hood while collaborating with suse, the packaging was a freak show and the culture was abrasive.
Rocky until PCLinuxOS gets a decent VM template.
Why PCLinuxOS?
I’m genuinely curious.
I’m sure enterprises are just running for the door, just like they did when IBM bought Red Hat. Also Hashicorp. Enterprises are going to dump Terraform because it’s closed source and owned by IBM
Nobody gets fired for buying IBM.
But people do get sacked when IBM buys you.
OpenTofu is the replacement for everyone else. Them too?
Why replace Hashi if you’re in the RH or IBM ecosystem? Why replace it at all if you’re an enterprise? They have enterprise support.
Terragrunt provides enterprise support for OpenTofu last I was looking into it.
Why invest around IP you have no control around if you don’t have to?
Downsizing the number FOSS developers every couple of years is pretty much the standard in enterprises, yes.
