Wed, 10 Aug 2005
openSUSE FUD
A new "community-based" version of SUSE Linux - openSUSE has been lauched. From the outside view it seems they are doing the same step Red Hat did three years ago, when they started the Red Hat Linux Project, now called the Fedora Project. I appreciate this move (I've even set up an openSUSE mirror), but they should refrain from insulting the Fedora Project in their FAQ: The last entry of their FAQ consists of two paragraphs of vague marketing-speak and buzzwords, and the last paragraph is a pure FUD(?):
When compared specifically to Fedora, the openSUSE project embraces and develops several additional important open standards not included in Fedora, such as CIM (the Common Information Model), and YaST (a standard, open source configuration and management suite for Linux). Plus, the openSUSE project has a large desktop and usability effort, strengthened by many of the top open source GUI designers in the world.
Well, CIM is currently vaporware without any working implementation, and YaST is not a standard in any meaning of this word I am aware of (YaST is a proprietary administrative interface for SUSE Linux, used by nobody outside SUSE userbase - and even some of SUSE users think it is a piece of crap).
Fedora has of course some of well-known desktop and usability people as well (Havoc Pennington comes to mind), as well as GUI designers. Nothing special for openSUSE here. So, their last FAQ entry in fact have not answered the question, it is just spreading the FUD. I think people at SUSE should be grown enough by now to avoid such insults of the neighbour project :-(