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SUSE to go private

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Re: SUSE to go private

#211

Post by prmoustache »

xtracto wrote: post #61
greatNespresso wrote: post #34

Ok naive question but SUSE was the first Linux distro I used 15 years ago and never touched it again. For those of HN that use it today, what's their strength compared to RHEL or Ubuntu in the enterprise world?

Just recently I was reading about OpenSuse thimbleweed rolling release. I read a lot of Great things about it, everyone said it was great. Then I saw a couple of videos and realized its UI (of their control center) is stuck in the 90s and it has several rough edges (like when installing it, I wont show you a list of WiFi access points, but ask you to manually enter the name of your AP and the encryption method... in…

How many times in a year do you expect to go into the "control center" to change config? And how bad is it to have an old UI stuck in the 90's [1]compared while most distros still expect you to edit config files like in the 70's/80's[2]? Besides I am pretty sure you can configure tumbleweed without even touching that control center.

I haven't tried tumbleweed, but I have tried Mint a few months ago and it didn't really striked me as having much more modern tool and I don't think I even used a configuration management tool.

[1] that many people would praise nowadays by the way. [2] which still works really well and is still a pretty good UX imho.

Re: SUSE to go private

#212

Post by zxspectrum1982 »

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 bet: they want to restructure and sell the company. Selling something you don't fully own is tough so they'd rather control 100% of it and then sell it, even at a loss.

Re: SUSE to go private

#214

Post by uselpa »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #41
subtextminer wrote: post #30

Yet another reason to move to Debian. While in many ways not comparable to what's happened with Redhat, with Suse turning to the dark side one wonders how much longer Canonical will last before doing something similar. Make no doubt about it, private equity is all about short term shareholder returns. That's not a bad things in principle but if you don't want to wake up yet again with your distro having the rug pulle…

Debian is great indeed (I am a a Debian developer myself although rather inactive) - but today’s news isn’t much of a change in whether SUSE is or isn’t on any definition of the dark side. Why do I say that? Simply, as per the linked announcement itself, this takeover offer is by the current majority shareholder who already owns 79% of the company. They can already win any shareholder vote they want to win. They alre…

Nah. I live and work in Luxembourg. Workers rights are very similar.

Re: SUSE to go private

#216

Post by kiney »

buzer wrote: post #105
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…

In Finland if someone controls over 90% of the shares they have right to forcefully buy rest of the shares (and also obligation if someone wants to sell at at that point). So if they wanted to go fully own the company they need to high enough offer that they will at least hit 90%. I'm not sure if you could from public company to private without all shareholders agreeing to it as that would benefit large shareholder a…

In germany it's similiar, but 95%. That might explain the high premium

Re: SUSE to go private

#217

Post by SSLy »

jhoelzel wrote: post #184

Love it! Personally i dont think the public offering has done them any good. They are unparalleled in the kubernetes space and im expecting much more awesome things to come. (and no, i dont simply mean clicky bunty rancher) By now i am suggesting Suse products to all my clients with the guarantee that even if i get hit with a bus and will not return, there will always(!) be someone to support their software. They are…

>They are for instance the only ones actually doing this.

And Red Hat isn't? What am I missing?

Re: SUSE to go private

#218

Post by swozey »

V99 wrote: post #170
jb_gericke wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the founding Rancher members left to start Acorn ( https://www.acorn.io ) some time ago.

We did, and are seemingly the assholes to which he refers.

You were grinding your Engineers into the ground and sold 3-6 months after I started. We were wondering why we were so overworked and then we knew, you were in the middle of the sale and probably just trying to get big names under the portfolio. This was at the HEIGHT of Covid no less so we already had that additional stress and nobody at Rancher cared about that at all. There wasn't a single email or meeting or anything giving people grace that I saw, telling them if they need time away to take it, etc, the entire company just acted like nothing was going on. Absolutely the opposite of the next company I went to.

I've only worked at one other company that comparatively treated their Engineers as badly and overworked as R. I started at the company with 3 other people on my team. None of them were there 1 year later, including myself. IIRC I quit after 6 months on the spot with no backup plan.

We were expected to make how-to videos, how-to articles, make labs, run labs w/public questions, give hour long tailored demos, 2-5 meetings with clients a day (potential and current) while also doing the actual technical work to deploy clusters, technical work testing various things (like Longhorn performance), complex cluster troubleshooting, all while having to keep on top of knowing everything about k8s and infra daily. Probably much more I don't remember right now. I worked SO many nights and weekends to keep caught up as did others.

I was so excited to work there as a k8s contrib getting to actually be paid to work on k8s and it was .... that. Thrown into a meat grinder with no room to breath. Every single day and week.

Re: SUSE to go private

#219

Post by LaLaLand122 »

greatNespresso wrote: post #34

Ok naive question but SUSE was the first Linux distro I used 15 years ago and never touched it again. For those of HN that use it today, what's their strength compared to RHEL or Ubuntu in the enterprise world?

What's exactly "the enterprise world"?

Honestly, all the distributions "just work" and are "stable" (i.e. they don't crash and corrupt your data). You could just pick up a random one. You will find some specific problems affecting you, sure... you will report (or even fix) them and, after a while, the distro will be perfect for you (it will still have some problems, but none affecting you because you have reported/fixed them).

The main thing about RHEL is that it's "stable" (i.e. it doesn't change) over a crazy long period of time. If you are selling software, the lack of change makes it easy to support. If you are buying software, it's a good platform to use because developers support it.

RHEL being historically the most popular "doesn't change" distro, I have never seen a big point in using other. Nowadays your vendor is probably also supporting Ubuntu, though. SUSE? A lot of them will support it, but not all. As long as the vendors you use support the distro you use it doesn't matter, I guess.

Re: SUSE to go private

#220

Post by janosdebugs »

prmoustache wrote: post #210
janosdebugs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license matters little if SuSE is the one footing the bill for developing it.

When a product is great but a company turn bad usually most of the good DEV flee. I think it is quite frequent that former developers start a new company or join a company that has the same of developing that product or a fork of it.

It works only if the change is abrupt enough. If the change happens slowly, the bleed is also slow and the talent is gradually leaving.
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