Yenya's World

Wed, 10 Aug 2005

openSUSE FUD

A new "community-based" version of SUSE Linux - openSUSE has been lauched. From the outside view it seems they are doing the same step Red Hat did three years ago, when they started the Red Hat Linux Project, now called the Fedora Project. I appreciate this move (I've even set up an openSUSE mirror), but they should refrain from insulting the Fedora Project in their FAQ: The last entry of their FAQ consists of two paragraphs of vague marketing-speak and buzzwords, and the last paragraph is a pure FUD(?):

When compared specifically to Fedora, the openSUSE project embraces and develops several additional important open standards not included in Fedora, such as CIM (the Common Information Model), and YaST (a standard, open source configuration and management suite for Linux). Plus, the openSUSE project has a large desktop and usability effort, strengthened by many of the top open source GUI designers in the world.

Well, CIM is currently vaporware without any working implementation, and YaST is not a standard in any meaning of this word I am aware of (YaST is a proprietary administrative interface for SUSE Linux, used by nobody outside SUSE userbase - and even some of SUSE users think it is a piece of crap).

Fedora has of course some of well-known desktop and usability people as well (Havoc Pennington comes to mind), as well as GUI designers. Nothing special for openSUSE here. So, their last FAQ entry in fact have not answered the question, it is just spreading the FUD. I think people at SUSE should be grown enough by now to avoid such insults of the neighbour project :-(

Section: /computers (RSS feed) | Permanent link | 2 writebacks

2 replies for this story:

KennV wrote: Yast

I agree with your viewpoint of Fedora bashing, theres no need for it. I just wanted to point out that yast is open source now. How useful it is is a matter of preference. I use it in combination with editing configs and it seems to save me time. Kenn

Yenya wrote: Yast and "proprietary"

I know Yast is open source. However, by "proprietary" I mean that nobody outside SUSE userbase is using it. So it is definitely not a "standard" by any meaning of this word I am aware of. It is as proprietary as Microsoft Word document format is proprietary (even though you can apparently dig up a description somewhere from the MSDN CDs).

Reply to this story:

 
Name:
URL/Email: [http://... or mailto:you@wherever] (optional)
Title: (optional)
Comments:
Key image: key image (valid for an hour only)
Key value: (to verify you are not a bot)

About:

Yenya's World: Linux and beyond - Yenya's blog.

Links:

RSS feed

Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak

The main page of this blog

Categories:

Archive:

Blog roll:

alphabetically :-)