

Novell: Why we don't need a third Linux distro - IgorPartola
http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=3070

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ghshephard
I just did a quick survey of seven coworkers who are all familiar with the
Linux, in order of likelihood of deploying in a commercial environment, the
three distros that they indicated would recommend:

o CentOS - which is pretty bog standard for large web environments that are
RPM Based that need to, for whatever reason, stay close to the RHEL platform.

o RHEL - For anybody who needs RedHat Support, or needs to be able to tell
Oracle (or other enterprise vendor) they are running on a supported platform.
Or they are just PHBs that need the comfort of deploying "Supported"
environments.

o Ubuntu - This is a bit of an outlier, but we have a number of Debian Snobs
who have a preference for the apt/dpkg/deb way of doing things, and Ubuntu,
particularly LTS, seems to have some mindshare here.

Nobody mentioned Suse, though this is in Silicon Valley, and I get the sense
that Novell doesn't have as much presence here.

~~~
barrkel
I have zero experience in deploying Linux in a commercial environment, only
home / hobbyist usage; but I wonder why Ubuntu is ahead of Debian?

(I assume we're not talking desktops here.)

~~~
sigzero
Maybe commercial support is easier to get? That would be a biggie for a
business. Possibly more up to date packages? I am just speculating though.

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ozten
What a weak argument. Vendor X suggests that vendor X and Y are plenty of
choice, that you don't need vendor Z.

A better blog post: Oracle just screwed your J2EE ecosystem, hope you don't
deploy their version of linux for even deeper vendor lock-in there too.

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protomyth
Sadly, American car companies could have probably wrote the same article about
the impending Japanese car imports (market leadership, infrastructure (dealer
& mechanics), no market demand).

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gaius
A _third_ distro?!

~~~
IgorPartola
As in enterprise support for Linux distros.

~~~
gaius
It's more complicated than that. F'rinstance on Debian you can

    
    
        # apt-get install oracle-xe
    

and you can run full-blown Oracle on it with no trouble at all...

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geoffc
I would like to see the stats from Linode et al. on deployments. My sense is
that Ubuntu is growing faster than the other distros.

~~~
jessejmc
<http://www.linode.com/about/> \- In the Interesting Statistics box.

    
    
      48% of deployments are Ubuntu
      24% of deployments are Debian
      16% of deployments are CentOS
      4.3% of deployments are Fedora
      3.1% of deployments are Gentoo

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lazyant
They are right; we have RHAT/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu, no need for 3rd
enterprise (or pretty much other) Linux distro.

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lenni
I kinda agree with the article but is like Microsoft saying: "Who needs Java
when you can have .NET?" They would say that wouldn't they?

I can't figure out what they are trying to get at with this article. I can't
help but feeling that they sound a little desperate.

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sharkey
Yeah, Novell probably needs to ask itself if we really need a _second_
"enterprise" Linux distro.

The way Ubuntu is growing, RedHat had probably better start worrying about the
same ...

~~~
nkassis
I don't see Ubuntu and Redhat serving the same market personally. I use Ubuntu
everywhere but on some large servers, Redhat was the choice. They had the
drivers and were a supported vendor for the hardware we got. To me that's two
markets.

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sliverstorm
I cannot help but wonder what portion of the 95% domination Novell
contributes. I cannot help but suspect this is a case of a tiny nobody
pretending he's best buds with the 800-lb gorilla that doesn't even know he's
there.

I mean, sure, it adds to 95%- but who's to say Novell isn't only 3% by itself?

~~~
darklajid
Well, obviously I have not more numbers than you. But Suse (and later
OpenSuse) was very prominent for a long time in Germany (according to
empirical references providing the best l10n experience combined with
commercial support).

They lost a lot afterwards/in the last years, but I'd still say that they are
relevant (mind you - without running Suse here.. I'm running a distribution
that didn't get mentioned here and has no commercial support..):

\- The OpenSuse BuildService [1] is really awesome. Think Ubuntu PPAs, just
without the limitation of being for a single distribution/release. It's
basically a build system that serves everyone and is still actively improved
day by day. Want to build packages for Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora? It can do it for
you..

\- If you have looked at Suse Studio [2] once, live, you'll agree that this is
an awesome product for a lot of deployments. Think "Let me create my linux
based appliance with a few clicks using a nice interface".

\- Novell still funds a lot of desktop stuff. Granted, RedHat is probably
bigger. But if you think "Gnome" you probably see right away that they are
both deeply involved and actively moving the platform forward.

\- Suse improved zypper (the yum/apt-get/aptitude alternative) by _huge_
amounts concerning speed and usability and it is now for all intents and
purposes at least equivalent to the competitors

\- Remember the outcry of the open source community after Novell made the
agreement with Microsoft regarding the patent protection (fail to find the
correct words, you probably know what I mean) for .Net technology: If you are
afraid of the risk there, you'll be a customer of Novell I guess.

I agree that RedHat is probably the bigger one (and the "we gained 5% claim is
therefor maybe misleading), but - pulling numbers from ... nowhere.. I'd
rather put them at 30 (Novell) vs 60 (Redhat) % of the market.

1: <https://build.opensuse.org/>

2: <http://susestudio.com/>

