From: stryder@telenet.be.invalid   
      
   On Thursday 24 May 2012 01:08, Adam conveyed the following to   
   alt.os.linux.mandriva...   
      
   > Aragorn wrote:   
   >   
   >> On Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:41, Adam conveyed the following to   
   >> alt.os.linux.mandriva...   
   >   
   > We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....   
      
   Well, ultimately, that's what all of this is about, isn't it?  Given the   
   uncertainty surrounding the future of the Mandriva distribution,   
   contemplation of going with another distribution is pretty much   
   mandatory.   
      
   >> Okay, so you've got room for...   
   >>   
   >>       ° Mandriva,   
   >>       ° Mageia,   
   >>       ° PCLinuxOS, and   
   >>       ° openSUSE   
   >>   
   >> Those four seem the closest related.   
   >   
   > Well, it /may/ turn out that the best distro for me isn't related at   
   > all, maybe Slackware or FreeBSD or something.   
      
   Mind you that FreeBSD is not GNU/Linux.  It too is a UNIX-family   
   operating system, but you wouldn't be running a Linux kernel.  Also,   
   hardware support in FreeBSD is seriously lagging behind Linux.   
      
   > It does make sense to start looking with something similar, though.   
      
   Of course.  I'm assuming that someone who stuck with a particular   
   distribution for so long as you have, and as most of us here have, will   
   be most comfortable with a distribution that has roughly the same look &   
   feel - by which I'm not talking of one's choice of desktop environment,   
   but rather in how the distribution is organized and handled - and the   
   same kind of reliability.   
      
   >> Of course, some could argue that openSUSE would be less related   
   >   
   > What about their (former?) connection with Novell?  What's SuSe's   
   > reputation because of that?   
      
   Novell has always had a good reputation, and Novell SuSE - i.e. the   
   commercial versions - are often being deployed in organizations and   
   companies, on par with RedHat.  Novell SuSE and RedHat are both endorsed   
   by IBM for use on their own machines, so that says a lot about their   
   reliability.   
      
   Now, Novell has of course been acquired by Attachmate a while back, and   
   the current business-oriented distributions are called SuSE Linux   
   Enterprise Desktop and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.  The community-   
   developed distribution is openSUSE, but unlike Fedora, openSUSE isn't as   
   volatile or bleeding edge.  Version-wise, the packages that go into   
   openSUSE are roughly on par with what Mandriva and Mageia are offering.   
      
   For instance, openSUSE has now for the newest release decided to use   
   systemd as the init replacement, and systemd was already present (and   
   the default) in openSUSE 12.1, but in 12.1 you still had the option to -   
   at boot time - temporarily choose a traditional SysV init, as well as to   
   replace systemd permanently later on with the traditional SysV init.   
   This is even documented on the openSUSE website.   
      
   Now, on account of Novell, it is of course a well-known fact that Novell   
   has entered a pact with the devil a number of years ago, when they   
   signed that interoperability deal with Microsoft, but Novell's version   
   of the facts has always been different from Microsoft's, in the sense   
   that Microsoft claimed that it was a kind of non-litigation pact on   
   account of SuSE and its users with regard to Microsoft intellectual   
   property in any version of SuSE.   
      
   Novell itself has always maintained that they have never acknowledged   
   the existence of Microsoft intellectual property in their distribution,   
   and I am more inclined to believe anyone other than Microsoft.   
   Microsoft is well-known as a master FUDster and a patent troll.  And if   
   I had been the CEO of Novell back at the time, then common sense would   
   have told me that interoperability with GNU/Linux [*] is by definition   
   the very last thing on Microsoft's mind, and that it would have been   
   stupid to reach out to Microsoft, because the one thing you can say   
   about Microsoft with the utmost certainty is that they want GNU/Linux   
   (and all FLOSS in general) dead and buried by yesterday.   
      
      
   [*] Yes, Microsoft does supply patches to the Linux kernel to allow it   
       to run on top of Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor, but this is only   
       because Microsoft were caught red-handed hard-linking against a   
       GPL'ed network driver, and thus violating the GPL.  As such, they   
       were legally forced to release the source code under the GPL, but   
       - despite their own statements about this, which were of course   
       not to be interpreted in any other way than that it was spin -   
       they would soon abandon the development of the submitted code   
       from there on, requiring the Linux kernel developers to prod them   
       several times before they would maintain it again.  And at present   
       they are again maintaining the patches, but $DEITY knows for how   
       long that will be.  And Linus has stated that if it's not being   
       maintained anymore, it'll be thrown out of the kernel source tree,   
       just like with any other obsoleted code.   
      
   --   
   = Aragorn =   
   (registered GNU/Linux user #223157)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)