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SUSE to go private

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Re: SUSE to go private

#91

Post by justinclift »

JimXugle wrote: post #88
treesciencebot wrote: post #81

Is there any reason for the buyer here who already owns almost 80% of the company to offer a 67% premium for the remaining 20% of the shares? What would have happened if they offered a 30% premium or a 15% one (from what I understand, they have both simple majority and qualified majority so that means they don't really need to ask anyone for anything). It's not like they want to get 100% ownership since this is a pur…

My knowledge on this is limited, and US-specific, but I'd imagine the situation in Europe is similar... In the US, publicly traded companies are subject to a lot of laws that private companies aren't subject to, most notably being required to make periodic public disclosures about finances and (to a more limited extent) business plans. Making false statements on these required disclosures is a crime, even if not inte…

In some countries, minority stake holders over a certain percentage (5% ?) from memory can be entitled to various measures as well. eg being able to check the company books / financials, and so on

Re: SUSE to go private

#93

Post by COGlory »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #70
COGlory wrote: post #68

I am cautiously optimistic. From the article: > Both SUSE’s Management and Supervisory Boards have expressed support for the strategic opportunity presented by this delisting. They believe that it will enable SUSE to concentrate on its operational priorities and the execution of its long-term strategy without the pressure of public markets. Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now. I a…

I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that make them unparalleled?

Open Build System and OpenQA, for automated building and testing of packages. This is what gets updates to their rolling release Tumbleweed faster than Arch, but with no instability ever. I can't emphasize enough how rock solid Tumbleweed is. OBS also doubles as their own AUR equivalent - you can make your own repo and do your own builds and install from the command line, or browse and install what other people have done.

Leap is their stable distro, and shares binaries with SLES, their enterprise offering.

Both Leap and Tumbleweed have BTRFS by default, with Snapper for automated snapshots at upgrade and boot. Update messed something up? System won't boot? Just run an old snapshot until it's fixed. Zypper, the package manager, has state-of-the-art dependancy resolution, personally the best I've used.

They have a number of extremely interesting spinoff projects: MicroOS and MicroOS desktop (recently renamed, but the new names are escaping me) which use immutable root filesystems with automated updates and native Podman support. Snapper integration shines there, as well. If it fails to boot after update, it'll automatically roll back.

They're doing quite a bit, and it's all culminating in being very useable. Tumbleweed is the crown jewel, though.

Re: SUSE to go private

#94

Post by msla »

wheelerof4te wrote: post #74
tristor wrote: post #67

Start of the end, private equity ruins everything it touches. RIP SUSE

Private companies funded by public funds is my jam. So, most of the tech megacorps in the US. Oh, the glory of fasc...ehem, capitalism.

Fascist corporations have more to do with unions than they do with business corporations:

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm

Re: SUSE to go private

#95

Post by canpan »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #70
COGlory wrote: post #68

I am cautiously optimistic. From the article: > Both SUSE’s Management and Supervisory Boards have expressed support for the strategic opportunity presented by this delisting. They believe that it will enable SUSE to concentrate on its operational priorities and the execution of its long-term strategy without the pressure of public markets. Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now. I a…

I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that make them unparalleled?

So I just installed it yesterday on my new home PC. Switching from Windows after I sold my old PC. (I do like gaming sometimes).

Installation worked flawlessly. Hardware was detected on the spot. I could install NVidia's official driver through YaST. Installing Steam from the package manager.

Now I am sitting with a switch pro controller and playing Hogwarts Legacy.

All around a solid experience. Their biggest competitor in this space might be Ubuntu. For me Suse has a more solid feeling to it. Also supports KDE better.

Re: SUSE to go private

#96

Post by tempest_ »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #70
COGlory wrote: post #68

I am cautiously optimistic. From the article: > Both SUSE’s Management and Supervisory Boards have expressed support for the strategic opportunity presented by this delisting. They believe that it will enable SUSE to concentrate on its operational priorities and the execution of its long-term strategy without the pressure of public markets. Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now. I a…

I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that make them unparalleled?

A lot of the sibling comments are talking about this distro itself but they are also neglecting SUSE foray into the container orchestration space with Rancher and K3s. I would assume that is where they are looking to grow.

Re: SUSE to go private

#98

Post by lmm »

TylerE wrote: post #77
wlesieutre wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know that I've ever been optimistic about a company being purchased by private equity. Anyone have counterexamples where that turned out well for customers? The justification sounds good, but they'd say something like that even if the plan was "squeeze money out of the company at the expense of users and customers and reputation."

When Warren Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1962, he rapidly turned it from a failing textile company into a monster. Not private equity exactly, but he personally bought up 51% of the shares.

> When Warren Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1962, he rapidly turned it from a failing textile company into a monster.

It's not like he improved their textile business. He took the name as a shell for his investment activities.

> Not private equity exactly, but he personally bought up 51% of the shares.

That's the opposite of the "without the pressure of public markets" situation though. He was doing quarterly reporting and answerable to shareholders (in some ways more answerable than a CEO who doesn't own the majority of shares - there are specific protections for minority shareholders).

Re: SUSE to go private

#99

Post by profwalkstr »

deaddodo wrote: post #76
wlesieutre wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know that I've ever been optimistic about a company being purchased by private equity. Anyone have counterexamples where that turned out well for customers? The justification sounds good, but they'd say something like that even if the plan was "squeeze money out of the company at the expense of users and customers and reputation."

Many could argue that Dell improved substantially after its 2013 transition to private ownership. At least, from the consumer perspective, things improved drastically. Linux support, a wider variety of competitive lines with much needed improvements to legacy lines, adoption of AMD for CPUs/GPUs, etc. I can't speak of their server/enterprise business, however.

I think Dell went downhill after the acquisition, their hardware quality is junk all across their line: servers, workstations, laptops, monitors, etc. Every device from them that I had my hands on recently have, at best, terrible build quality, and at worst, multiple failures. And their support is a bad joke.
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