Hi, I want to raise an issue for discussion; It is not related specifically to Hebrew, nor to Israel, nor to me, but I haven't seen any similar discussion on the net, so I raise it here:
Until recently, there was not a real competition in the field of Linux distributions; RedHat was the default, and all the rest (hundreds (!) of them, according to LWN) served specific niches. This has been the status for at least 5-6 years. (Mandrake was popular too, but earned its popularity thanks for starting as "RH++", till it was popular enough to start its own way) However, recently, in a very short time (2-3 months), a series of dramatic events happened, that might changed everything we have ever known about this field: 1. RH stopped shipping packages (though Fedora is partially an option). 2. Novell acquired SuSE. 3. IBM left its 100% neutral status, and now is backing SuSE directly, developing shared projects with it, and even helped Novell to acquire SuSE (see #2 above) by investing $50M in Novell shares. 4. Sun released its own Linux distribution, JDS (p.k.a "MadHatter"), and guess what - it is based on SuSE too. So with no RH package anymore, Mandrake based on charity, Debian serves mostly freaks and embedded needs, and all of the 3 big names (IBM/SUN/ Novell) backing SuSE - is SuSE the "new RH"? Is it going to be the new "default Linux" instead of RH? The shared power of IBM/Sun/Novell should not be underestimated; It's a dramatic development that all of the three biggest names (in size of company) stand behind one distribution. In the past it has never happened; the most that such companies agreed to say, was that they preferred GNOME over KDE or vice-versa. Now, all of them stand behind the same distribution, which has not been the leader one, ever. Moreover, the center of power of SuSE has been in Europe in general, and Germany in particular, but all of these 3 companies are based in the US. Is it the start of a new era in the Linux business? Please don't try to guess my own opinion from this message (I still don't have), or flame me for raising the question; I'm just a wondering man, who has difficulties in trying to guess the future of Linux and choose his next distribution according to it. -- Eli Marmor [EMAIL PROTECTED] CTO, Founder Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd. __________________________________________________________ Tel.: +972-9-766-1020 8 Yad-Harutzim St. Fax.: +972-9-766-1314 P.O.B. 7004 Mobile: +972-50-23-7338 Kfar-Saba 44641, Israel ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
