this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Debian is a community system. If we nees to support a corporation with our money, it is in SUSE that we must place our hope. Our hope that Linux in the Enterprise will be ruled by a moral corporation.
SUSE fired almost all upstream contributors a decade or so ago. They used to employ 10-20 KDE developers, about the same number of GNOME developers, a bunch of OpenOffice developers (their Go-OO variant of OpenOffice served as base for LibreOffice), and maintained Mono. As much as I personally like openSUSE TW (IMO it's the best rolling release distribution), SUSE as a corporate entity is worse than Red Hat under IBM. If you think Red Hat under IBM is bad, look up what SUSE having been a Novell subsidiary and then getting sold two additional times did to them. Red Hat would need cancel upstream contributions for so much more to come down to the level of SUSE. A company looking for enterprise Linux support is still best served with Red Hat. Pretty much the entire competition was freeloading off Red Hat's work. After shutting down their entire desktop department, SUSE was left with a few packagers and two or so people who developed GNOME extensions.
As I wrote in another comment: The company most interested in helping out upstream projects with desktop focus is Valve, not only via their own developers but also by contracting Collabora and Blue Systems. Given how Valve's update cycle of SteamOS is, those contributions will mostly still land first in "regular" Linux distributions such as openSUSE TW or Fedora, though. It's a lucky coincidence that Valve developed and released Steam Deck but they are also mostly just interested in the plumbing and Plasma Desktop itself, not applications (unless it's about apps SteamOS developers use and they need to scratch their own itches though bug fixes). So Bluetooth an power management: sure. Music players: no.
SUSE is independent again and back to focusing on Linux. It was the American corporation Novell that did all the cuts. Now that it's back to being independent German they are putting new focus on Linux desktop.
MicroFocus selling SUSE to an investment firm is hardly making SUSE independent.
Great. Mind linking to announcements about hiring desktop developers? Browsing through jobs.suse.com I found two job ads about container-related software engineers in Taiwan. That's neither desktop nor German.
You're two years behind:
https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-SA-sets-final-offer-price-for-IPO/
https://kde.org/community/donations/ - Suse is a patron.
Can you explain why "community system" is bad? Genuinely curious, since the word community sounds like it's not controlled by corpo interests
Community systems are not bad, that's most of Linux, but there needs to be an ethical, FOSS-friendly enterprise system to get corpos invested in Linux and FOSS. Besides, corporate systems usually have massive dev teams and upstream/open-source a lot of their work. As much as I shit on Canonical and Red Hat, they've done immense amounts of beneficial work for Linux and FOSS.
That makes sense, thank you. My question above was specifically about Debian, since I've heard the point of it being community based used negatively in other places/threads too.
I didn't mean it in a negative light. The issue is that companies prefer to trust other companies, which is why it's good to have a moral company to point to.
Fun fact: For a few years HP was very invested in Debian because they saw that as the most likely successor to their old HP-UX Unix on mainframe servers.
Basically yes. Beautifully and accurately explained.
It's not bad but companies like someone to talk to/blame when something goes wrong.