In this interview by Preston St. Pierre, Alan Nugent, Novell’s CTO, speaks on behalf of Novell on their Linux strategy. Innovation is on the way at Novell, with a next-generation desktop in the plans. Internally, the Linux migration is on schedule, and the staff are wholly in favor of moving away from Windows.
Interview with Mr. Alan Nugent, Novell’s CTO
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The man sounds sane to me, compared to some other CTOs. He’s got a point, and that is that they offer solutions to business problems, and they don’t force their customers to do anything (**cough-RedHat-cough**, **cough-Microsoft-cough**). Furthermore they are comitted to offer a large variety of networking tools, for diferent needs, which is also good. Their prices are very competitive, and I think that it was a good choice not to create a new distro, as they can maintain compatibility across various Linux platforms. I think that Novell is a healty business and that it is good that they don’t trow nasty comments about their competition around, like some other companies do (**cough-SuN-cough**). Furthermore, I think that Novell will be competing closely with Sun, more than with MS or Red Hat. Red Hat already has a devoted customer base, and so does MS, well, even if its not as devoted as Red Hats. But Sun is trying to get both into the low end market and high end market, and it’s trying to push cheap products, as well as expensive products. I still like Star Office do, and the prise is a killer, compared to Microsofts offering.
Just my 2 cents…
“He’s got a point, and that is that they offer solutions to business problems, and they don’t force their customers to do anything (**cough-RedHat-cough**”
explain how redhat forces anything on their customers?
Well, remember when they’ve cancelled Red Hat Linux? Well, that was pretty nasty. Also read their license for RHEL. Other than that they are the most inovative Linux Company out there, and they are comitted to the GPL. I’m not trying to bash Red Hat here, but only to explain my point. Maybe it was a little bit exagerated, so I would say that Red Hat doesn’t force their customers. Happy?
First! Redhat is a business, they are out to make money, (nothing wrong with that) they offer exclusive RHN updates & support which means a lot to a business that need to keep servers & workstations up & running @ optimal levels…
don’t worry Redhat can not ever make a monopoly out of Linux, if you dont want to use it then try another distro, there are lots to choose from…
for the avarage home user that just wants a personal desktop solution there is Fedora. they can get Fedora free which has a hell of a lot to offer considering an unnamed alternative in redmond washington which wants a BIG fist full of cash just for a personal desktop and another BIGGER fist full of cash just for |/| $ office, i think Redhat is being quite generous by offering Fedora free to anyone that wants to use it.
HappyTrails :^)
i never said anything bad about Novell/SuSE, i wish Novell/SuSE all the good luck they need too, so dont get your pantys in a wad because you dont like my view about redhat…
i want to see both Redhat and SuSE thrive and do lots of good business because that is honest competition, not lock in, if you want to talk about lock in then you need to consider file formats like MS-Offce .doc or Powerpoint’s closed file formats, if a Redhat & OpenOffice user decided to switch to ANY other distro there is no loss because OpenOffice runs on em all which is a damn sight better than trying to convert a closed MS file format to another file format…
and yes i am happy :^)
“Well, remember when they’ve cancelled Red Hat Linux? Well, that was pretty nasty. ”
no it wasnt. it just made business sense. it wasnt forcing anyone to do anything at all. redhat promised everyone 1 year of free support for every redhat linux version and it did more than that for 7.3 and 8 and 1 year of support for 9. what more do you want for free?
I’ve never said anything about free, but there was never an option for paid support after 1 year for RHL 9.
“, but there was never an option for paid support after 1 year for RHL 9.”
sure was. it was called progeny services. free support is still being provided by fedoralegacy.org. it works wonderfully well.
I wish Novell/SUSE all the best…but to me, MEPIS is the best distro out there. I was able to listen to the BBC out of the box. MEPIS also recognized and installed ALL my hardware without having to do a thing!
My problem as with all Linux distros though, are the fonts that are not anywhere as crisp as their Windows counterparts. Firefox is also very very ugly on Linux. What is happening?
Cb..
If you’re using MEPIS is might be better to grab the QT Firefox when it comes out (anyone know?)
“. Firefox is also very very ugly on Linux. What is happening? ”
make sure xft+gtk2 is enabled
“grab the QT Firefox when it comes out (anyone know?)”
about 3 months..
When Microsoft does things for business, then you guys hate them. When Redhat use Linux to make money, you say they are out for business. Thats pretty unfair.
Also IBM is pimping Linux for you know what. Do you really feel that just because IBM is investing money in Linux, its good?
Same way why you feel Redhat is good? They are not doing charity, they are also trying to make money.
Just try to be honest and be fair in your views. Every business is business, you do some good things, some bad things…but at the end of the day all business are business…Every company will do whatever is needed to get its business.
The only reason MEPIS does that is because it ships with non-free software. If you buy a copy of SuSE or Mandrake, as opposed to downloading a free one, the BBC will work too. It’s not an issue of “MEPIS rocks everyone else sucks!” but a question of which versions of which distros decide to ship with non-free software included.
As for fonts – most Linux distros these days turn on anti-aliasing by default. Most people like this; to some it just looks ‘fuzzy’. If that’s how you feel you might want to try turning it off. Windows still doesn’t have anti-aliasing by default; if you want it, you can turn on the Cleartype thing which is supposedly only for LCDs – for CRTs you don’t get the benefit of sub-pixel hinting, but it does turn on normal anti-aliasing. But if normal Windows fonts look “sharp” (as opposed to “jagged”, which is how some of us see them) and normal Linux fonts look “fuzzy” to you, you might prefer anti-aliasing off. One other possibility is that you have an LCD display and don’t have subpixel hinting turned on; if you have an LCD, check KDE or GNOME’s font settings to turn it on.
Microsoft is a monopoly, Redhat is not.