It’s good history, I don’t think it really has any bearing today though.
Novell purchased SuSE Linux AG. Novell signed the agreements, and they were very controversial at the time. Novell was much more involved in the day to day than IBM is at Red Hat, SUSE was not an independent business they were a big part of Novell (the SuSE founder left at one point because of how they ran things, he did eventually return). Novell was later purchased by Attachmate, which made SUSE an independent business unit, both were acquired by Micro Focus. It was sold to EQT Partners in 2018 and operates as an independent business today.
Novell and today’s company are not the same, they’ve gone through significant changes multiple times, which is maybe a better reason to at least put in some thought.
(The end was not very clear, but I was merely pointing out that the changes in ownership might be a reason not to go with SUSE)
Around that 15 year mark Novell was also in a lawsuit with SCO regarding ownership of Unix copyrights, their success is the primary reason that SCO disappeared. I think this was a much larger deal than the maneuvering Microsoft was doing (except when Microsoft was giving money to SCO).
I’d almost forgotten about the story and this reminded me that I ditched SuSE Linux at that time because after that decision they brought out versions of their OS with so many missing features it was almost unusable compared to previous versions. This was around version 4 thru 8 that I was using it as my only OS. When I found I could no longer use it as an effective desktop alternative, and I refused to put MS anything in my machine, and it was due replacement anyway, I went over to Macs. Note that I have some ancient iMacs that can’t run anything remotely current in their own OS, I’ve turned back to Linux to get them used. Unbuntu works but I’d be interested to try SuSE again if it’s any good again.
Before they released openSUSE it was getting more and more locked out as they really wanted you to buy it. Seems pretty good today but I don’t know how well it works on Macs.
I’ve seen this before and also responded to it, note that I don’t work for or even use SUSE, openSUSE, etc.
https://lemmy.world/comment/966395
(The end was not very clear, but I was merely pointing out that the changes in ownership might be a reason not to go with SUSE)
Around that 15 year mark Novell was also in a lawsuit with SCO regarding ownership of Unix copyrights, their success is the primary reason that SCO disappeared. I think this was a much larger deal than the maneuvering Microsoft was doing (except when Microsoft was giving money to SCO).
It is fundamentally owned by corporations, Red Hat were the good guys until just a little while ago.
But I know a distro that will not be sold and ruined, it’s called Debian. There are a few others like it.
I’d almost forgotten about the story and this reminded me that I ditched SuSE Linux at that time because after that decision they brought out versions of their OS with so many missing features it was almost unusable compared to previous versions. This was around version 4 thru 8 that I was using it as my only OS. When I found I could no longer use it as an effective desktop alternative, and I refused to put MS anything in my machine, and it was due replacement anyway, I went over to Macs. Note that I have some ancient iMacs that can’t run anything remotely current in their own OS, I’ve turned back to Linux to get them used. Unbuntu works but I’d be interested to try SuSE again if it’s any good again.
Before they released openSUSE it was getting more and more locked out as they really wanted you to buy it. Seems pretty good today but I don’t know how well it works on Macs.