Tarun Dua

Recollecting the disussion on the Linux India General for the sake of record.


Being quoted sounds good as long as things are put in perspective and supporting links put to the original quote if is on a public mailing list


http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=2048&max_rows=25&style=nested&viewmonth=200401


http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20040216/coverstory01.shtml


The Online media is still evolving in India. However the final article should have been
marked an advertorial rather than news in my not so humble opinion.


Hi Friends,


This is Srikanth from Express Computer, an IT business magazine from the
Indian Express group. This mail is regarding a story we are doing on the
impact Novell"s acquisition of Suse Linux could cause in the Indian market.


Would be grateful if some of you could spare some time to give views on the
following points :


* Impact on the Indian market


* Novell"s strengths and how this could be synergised to push Suse Linux


* How important do you think is India is in the overall Linux scenario and


how Novell can make a difference


* Without the acquisition of Suse Linux, what was Novell missing? How will
the acquisition help Novell?


* Do you believe that Novell can extend Linux"s reach to the desktop - a
space where Linux has not made a dent yet?


* What do you believe will be Novell"s strengths in Linux over Red Hat?


Thanks and Regards,


Srikanth RP


Senior Correspondent


Express Computer


srikanth@ex...


Tel : 022-563-01040 Extn : 340 / 56301013 (D)




From: Tarun Dua


Re: Impact of Novell buying out Suse Linux


2004-02-01 12:46

On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 15:42, Srikanth wrote:


> * Impact on the Indian market


Traditionally India has been a Redhat Country through and through thanks
to a popular computer magazine pioneering its distribution in India
under the name of PCQuest Linux which is actually Redhat under the hood.
Any other major Linux distribution therefore has had a real tough time
in the past trying to gain mindshare.


Typically there are a huge majority of Linux users who got their first
linux CD this way, many of whom (yours truly included) tried it for a
couple of versions of Redhat tinkering, learning with it and buying
Redhat(had we not tried it, we wouldn"t have had it bought).


Against this backdrop I find it rather not surprising that Redhat
actually turned over its standard distribution to be maintained by the
community ( using some of Redhat"s resources if I am not wrong) as it
is needed to protect this huge potential market of people familiar and
comfortable with a Redhat compatible distribution and not just in India.
However while ISO images of Suse are not available it has way to go
before it actually reaches critcal mass.


> * Novell"s strengths and how this could be synergised to push Suse Linux


Novell has also acquired Ximian better known for their extremely usable
Linux Desktop softwares(including a Desktop based on GNOME:Popular Linux
Desktop) itself apart from evolution:mail client, Connector for MS
Exchange) and automatic update software for Linux(Red Carpet). Novell is
also very keen on extending desktop market share by working with the
community who are extending the GNOME desktop and making it the most
usable desktop.


> * How important do you think is India is in the overall Linux scenario and


> how Novell can make a difference


There is a huge interest being shown by the CxO"s (from the top
management) looking at the Lower Total Cost of Ownership of Linux (which
is not the least due to its lower acquisiton cost). Its unmatched ease
of use, automatization possible and its ability to scale from an
extremely usable PDA to an IBM Mainframe. Apart from the push from the
workers in trenches ( the actual developers, system administrators and
the middle managers) who sneaked Linux into the biggest of organizations
years ago as mail-proxy and now as Desktops, Servers, Enterprise
Development Platform of choice and so on. Novell is also seems to be
pushing for migrating the pool of existing non-linux developers towards
linux using Mono (a Ximian project which is already usable and is
maturing fast) a technology which allows running C# and
MonoBasic(similar to Basic) on Linux. This combined with the focus on
usability for the average home user (I hear on some mailing lists that
Suse 9.0 autodetects exotic hardware which takes hours of expert help to
install on non-linux desktops)


> * Without the acquisition of Suse Linux, what was Novell missing? How will


> the acquisition help Novell?


Novell now has readymade brand that has done well for itself.


> * Do you believe that Novell can extend Linux"s reach to the desktop - a


> space where Linux has not made a dent yet?


See above on how Novell is working togethor with the community to
achieve this aim. Effort in the desktop area is required more in the
areas in terms of awareness than in any drastic improvements in
usability.


> * What do you believe will be Novell"s strengths in Linux over Red Hat?


I feel lack of easily available ISO images would be a bottleneck
for Novell in acquring mindshare coupled with the fact that the way a Suse Distribution
is configured is different from any other distribution.


As an advantage for Novell, Redhat doesn"t seem to be focussing on the "selling"
(not that they need to with Redhat/Fedora being most easily available distributions
it is rapidly getting installed initially as a second OS and eventually the only OS
on user"s harddisks)in the desktop market too much, and Suse has got pretty good
reviews to start with.


-Tarun


--


To design the perfect anti-Unix, write an operating system that thinks
it knows what you"re doing better than you do. And then adds injury to
insult by getting it wrong.


ESR :- The Art of Unix Programming