thelinuxlink.net

"SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel has resigned from Novell stating "Too late for me. I just decided to leave Suse/Novell. This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago." Novell confirmed his resignation but had little else to say on the topic. From the article: "Mantel's departure also comes less than a week after Novell announced a major restructuring that would result in 600 layoffs. It's unclear if Mantel's resignation is related to the restructuring.""

Judging by his final words, he clearly was unhappy with the situation at Novell, I it's a little sad that so many great SUSE people has left.

Hubert Mantel not only founded SUSE, but also maintained the SUSE Linux kernel for over a decade, let's hope his replacement won't screw anything up, because if he do I'm personally buying a plane ticket to where ever he lives and I've going to kick his ass!!

You have to wonder what's going on to make the founder want to leave the company he started and built up. The obvious answer is that the Ximian/Gnome people are the ones who have influence with the Novell executives. They're standardizing on Gnome as the desktop. I'm curious how many KDE developers are getting their walking papers? It's pretty sad, especially in Europe where Suse is the #1 linux distro. Where do they go now? We're talking to the Novell people in a few weeks. Should be interesting.

Probably shouldn't have caved in and sold to Novell.

Into their hands, he played.

Patrick wrote:You have to wonder what's going on to make the founder want to leave the company he started and built up. The obvious answer is that the Ximian/Gnome people are the ones who have influence with the Novell executives. They're standardizing on Gnome as the desktop. I'm curious how many KDE developers are getting their walking papers? It's pretty sad, especially in Europe where Suse is the #1 linux distro. Where do they go now? We're talking to the Novell people in a few weeks. Should be interesting.

Well, Ximian was very good at understanding open source and free software, I guess Novell are getting too impatient to beat Red Hat with a stick or something, I really havn't heard of large deployments of Novell's Linux products, which includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 which I find surperior to Red Hat Enterprise AS 4.0. Novell might be looking at Red Hat and just trying to learn a little, but maybe they need to learn from the guys they have internally, SUSE didn't become so big if they didn't do things right.

SUSE's previous CEO, Richard Seibt, also left not too long ago, and not too long before that another longtime SUSE employee left. And now the founder has left Novell, it makes you wonder what in the world Novell is doing.

But Pat, when you talk to the guys from Novell, make sure to ask them WHY they are dumping KDE, because I think you and I can agree that it is better than GNOME. Seriously, if you plan to move Windows people to Linux, I think KDE is the best option for that purpose.

I hope that when Novell launches a new line of enterprise products, I'll be able to fetch of a copy of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, that is good stuff man!

This really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's too bad, too -- I was planning on getting a cert from one of the big linux houses over the next year or so -- I guess it's RedHat for the win.

Snarkout wrote:This really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's too bad, too -- I was planning on getting a cert from one of the big linux houses over the next year or so -- I guess it's RedHat for the win.

Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth man, why is it that Red Hat seems to be the only "stable" company these days? I don't remember them having major layoffs for a long time.

Tsuroerusu wrote:Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth man, why is it that Red Hat seems to be the only "stable" company these days? I don't remember them having major layoffs for a long time.

RedHat is actually a profitable company.

Patrick wrote:

Tsuroerusu wrote:Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth man, why is it that Red Hat seems to be the only "stable" company these days? I don't remember them having major layoffs for a long time.

RedHat is actually a profitable company.

Indeed, and that was what I was reffering to, by "stable" I meant that their economics don't go up and down suddenly and stuff like that in general.

Damn... you'd almost wish that Hubert Mantel would buy SUSE back

Remember what happened with NeXT and Apple? Steve Jobs got fired by Apple then he started NeXT which then got bought by Apple and now Steve Jobs is CEO of Apple. You never know, maybe this thing could happen again, highly questionable yes, but you never know, I know that a lot of germans was very very proud of SUSE.

Judland wrote:Probably shouldn't have caved in and sold to Novell.

Into their hands, he played.

My feelings exactly. If you sell out, you give someone else control. It's too bad he can't find a place in the company where he's happy, but someone like that can easily find another place where he can contribute.

Hopefully he won't do like the guy from Gentoo and go work for Microsoft.

Novell now backpedaling? This article (in German) says they will offer both desktops:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/66011

Patrick wrote:Novell now backpedaling? This article (in German) says they will offer both desktops:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/66011

Let's hope those rumors are correct, I think trashing KDE would be like throwing years of SUSE's work right out the window!

Gomer_X wrote: Hopefully he won't do like the guy from Gentoo and go work for Microsoft.

Had a creative streak...



Continued from my earlier comment, http://static.flickr.com/17/19339659_1292fa7143_o.jpg

LOL!!!

Damn, that pissed off lizard is spittake funnay!

Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth man, why is it that Red Hat seems to be the only "stable" company these days? I don't remember them having major layoffs for a long time.

I wonder if it has anything to do with RedHat staying true to it convictions of open source and just adding value added services on top of that.

SuSE is a great sold distribution. When I use to run it on some of my servers back in the SuSE 7.X days I would have uptime in terms of years. Some of their kernel work was great.

I wish the best for novell and hope they can really make an inroads on the desktop. I don't care what desktop they use personally because I use both KDE and Gnome and I think they are equal in their own way.

I just hope we can make an inroads on the desktop. Given the current situation here in the states I find it hard to believe we will. microsoft will go all out before they lose the desktop. Including patent wars, legislation with bought government officials, and any nother legal/illegal means to outlaw Linux. Not to mention the majority of americans are lazy when it actually comes to learning something new.

I personally think that the world could live with both desktops. Why do we always have to chose or why does there always have to be a winner. It is the same corporate BS that I listen too everyday. That is why there are moronic decisions like to write Internet Exploder web pages for Intranet applications. They do this at my work and it is the most stupidest thing I have ever seen.

Well thanks for the rant - sorry to have gone on but had to get it off my chest.

jsusanka wrote:I personally think that the world could live with both desktops. Why do we always have to chose or why does there always have to be a winner.

I agree with you, and that's why I'm against Novell completely dumping KDE, because then there's only GNOME, and I don't want them to dump GNOME either because then you only have KDE, GNOME has a number of cool apps that I use (Gaim, Totem, Grip...) so SUSE with only KDE wouldn't exactly fit my needs either.

Anyway, I just read in the news today that Novell will be supporting both KDE and GNOME on their future enterprise products, GNOME will be the default desktop, but like during the installation of SUSE 10 you chose your default, and I can live with that, good decision by Novell, now I just hope they can find a good maintainer for the SUSE Linux kernel, I think it will be hard to replace Hubert Mantel who had been doing it for over a decade.