Networking Technology

I keep reading about how marvelous Novell (SuSE) Linux is and how everyone and his pet duck should be clamouring for it and for the life of me I cannot understand why. I've also read articles exhalting YaST as a wonderful thing and this makes even less sense to me.

 The truth is that Novell / SuSE, call it what you will is so far away from Open Source and "normal" Linux distributions, that you can throw all you ever learned bout Linux into the bin the moment you deploy SuSE. It is completely non-standard, everything has been "improved" to the extent that you need to book in for a few thousand Dollars worth of courses just to learn the basics, even then you are screwed.

Let's take Apache. If you have Red Hat, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Solaris, CenrOS or just about any other distribution, you edit /etc/httpd/httpd.conf. It's a single file, everything you ever wanted to know to modify it is on httpd://www.apache.org. It really isn't rocket science - that is, until you get to the Novell version, now whatever you read on apache.org is meaningless because there isn't a single httpd.conf file. Instead it's been split up into a myriad of meaningless small files, so kick out all you knew about apache  - take the Novell Course, so they can screw some cash out of you or your company and learn how to edit all these little files.

YaST, did I hear? If you change anything in YaST, the chances of your apache server working unless you want a single site is around nil, so you'll have to roll up your sleeves and do some manual editing, but that won't work either, because what is in YaST will override most of the manual changes you made!

Let's take something really simple like a Simple Machines Forum, running on Linux. You can install it on CentOS, Ubuntu, Red Hat - in fact just about anything at all EXCEPT SuSE. If you install it on SuSE, unlike all the others, you have to apply updates MANUALLY. With any other version just a single click and the update completes without any problem at all.

Found a package you like and decide to install it. Sure on CentOS - well I'll save my breath - ANYTHING except SuSE and there is a 95% chance it will install with either Apt or Yum or you can download the rpm, or the source and compile it. Try that on SuSE and you will run into a mountain of dependency errors and most of them are impossible to satisfy because of the non-OpenSource nature of SuSE.

Before you say another word about what a great product Novell have, go and look on their Forums. (I think at least you can still get into that without having to pay for a nice expensive support contract) and look at the thousands of great hairy bugs that are being reported every day. Read the Sysops replies and you quickly get the impression that ALL users of SuSE are idiots (other than the Sysops of course) There are NO bugs in SuSE only idiot users (who haven't taken all the Courses) and even those who HAVE taken the Courses still can't explain or fix the mass of problems, but it isn't Novell's fault - they must have installed it wrong or whatever.

Download a kernel update and it may well completely trash the server. Phone support and get answered by someone whose English is so accented that you can only understand one or two words in every sentence. I wouldn't worry too much about understanding because most times after several hours of wasted time, emails and calls, you'll be told that ÿou must have done something wrong. The only thing they can suggest is to reinstall" WOW, man that's great, you just paid more than $300 for that bit of advice!

Install iFolder but don't ever patch the server again or reboot it, because the minute you do either, iFolder stops working and no-one seems to know how to fix it. Funny it runs flawlessly on Ubuntu even with Mono and Ubuntu haven't yet sold their souls to Microsoft and what's more Ubuntu is FREE!

When Novell bought SuSE, a lot of us Novell die-hards that have supported NetWare through thick and thin, cheered this as a major advance, but sonn after Novell lost interest (like they did with Word Perfect, DR DOS, UnixWare etc.,) so they shipped it all off to India and sold themselves into Microsoft bondage. The deal with Microsoft did two things - It drained their profits, because now they had to pay Microsoft for every copy they sold and it made all the OpenSource Community livid with rage, which cost them a huge chunk of their support base.

Moving development to India did two other things, the quality of the product reached rock bottom and started to dig and the level of support was just about non-existent.

Since those happy(?) events, Novell have lost a huge chunk of the market share. Big companies, loyal to Novell for years, just dumped the buggy Linux and when they got the ultimatum "upgrade or else" they decided to either move to Microsoft OR stay with NetWare which at least they can rely on.

One of the "upper layers" of Novell in Europe proudly anncounced that they were only really interested in IDM, this was their main thrust (he didn't add - and everyone else can get lost - but this was the implication). Not content with that slap in the face, they then proceeded to blatantly steal (yes I do mean STEAL) corporate customers from their "valued" Partners. To really add insult to injury, they then decided to make everyone PAY and I mean through the nose) for a meaningless support contract before they can even download a patch.

SuSE á la Novell is a LOUSY, BUGGY, NON-STANDARD, product that ceased to be OpenSource a long time ago. Maybe new buyers will do better to either dump OES, SLES and dare I say SLED (that hardly anyone uses) and rename OpenSuSE to something else, because anything now with a Novell or ex-Novell label on it stinks to high heaven. I only hope that somewhere, someone will buy NetWare and keep that product going, because unlike SuSE, IT WORKS and Novell India didn't manage to screw it up completely!