● 02.29.12

●● SUSE (Microsoft Linux) is Ancient

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Novell, Patents, SLES/SLED at 4:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Daddy loves you, SUEsie

Summary: Response to articles that name Linux 3.0 as though it’s very new because of SUSE

IT HAS BEEN A long time since a major release of SLE*, which pays Microsoft a portion of the revenue. If CentOS is a “poor man’s RHEL”, then SUSE is a “dumb man’s RHEL” — one dumb enough to pay Microsoft for patents when there is clearly no need.

One might expect Attachmate to have released SLE* 12 by now, but the distribution sometimes look like it’s neglected. A lot of key developers and managers have left as well. Based on the press release and some news articles like this one, a service pack is all that Attachmate has to show. As one former Novell employee (Joe Brockmeier) put it, “[t]he move to the 3.0 kernel probably sounds more drastic than it is.”

No, and Linux 3.0 is actually not so new either. As another journalist put it (extending the original message):

SUSE today announced the general availability of SUSE® Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 2 (SP2). This latest update to the industry’s most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing offers improved performance, reliability and efficiency, while maintaining enterprise quality and application compatibility. Customers can use SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2 to deliver their mission-critical IT services faster, more reliably, and more cost effectively, today and tomorrow.

The whole media spin — the spin about it having Linux 3.0 — is actually unhelpfully deceiving. Had SUSE been up to date, it would have a newer kernel. For those who want something up to date, there are newer distributions which are not taxed by Microsoft. █

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