Dear VMware: Please don’t buy Novell

I’ll come right out and admit it: I don’t like Suse Linux as a server OS. I’m sure that I’ve offended a large number of you right off the bat, but hey, no sense in beating around the bush.

Some of my dislike is based around the fact that it’s not nearly as common as Red Hat, CentOS, or Ubuntu in the United States, and thus feels very foreign to someone used to those particular flavors. The rest of my aversion to Suse has to do with core beliefs. Suse has always seemed to want to make things easy for novice Linux users and, by doing so, makes things much harder for those of us who know what we’re doing. To me, that’s anathema.

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The basis of this is YaST2, the all-encompassing system tool that ships with Suse. It allows admins to perform a wide variety of system configuration tasks, from adding network interface configurations to downloading and installing new software to configuring any number of services on the box. It comes in a GUI and in a text-based console — and drives me absolutely nuts because it always seems to get in the way.

The way that YaST works is to assume complete control over text-based service configuration files, making it extremely difficult to implement any changes to the system outside of YaST. If YaST doesn’t specifically support a configuration element for a particular package, you have to fight with a host of YaST structures to make everything work. To me, that’s not much help.

Another problem is that, in times of trouble, you have to use YaST to make even simple configuration changes. When you do that remotely, the lag introduced by having to either run VNC to connect to the GUI console — or even the sluggishness in running the menu-driven YaST text-console app — is maddening. I like tools that get out of your way when you don’t need them. YaST simply isn’t that.

I’ve seen Suse in a number of shops, and after a while, a pattern emerged. Every shop ran its Suse servers with the full GUI on the console — and the Suse boxes were consistently surrounded by non-Suse Linux boxes operated by other admins. There’s no point to running a Linux server with a GUI, and I don’t even install any GUI packages when I do server builds. But it seems that those who work with Suse rely on those GUI tools and thus the console, which does nothing more than consume system resources for no real benefit.

I’m sure YaST is beloved by those who fear a bash prompt, but for those of us who live at that prompt, it’s a huge hindrance. To us, YaST is like a Linux version of Microsoft’s Clippy, the “helpful” paperclip that would show up and bug you to death when you were trying to write a paper or something. Except it’s worse, because this Clippy doesn’t pop up and ask if you want help with something; it actively interferes with what you’re trying to do.

A quick example might be when a service such as Sendmail needs a specific configuration element added that YaST doesn’t directly support. It’s the work of a few minutes to add the required line to the sendmail.mc. With YaST in the picture, it takes far more time to modify the YaST configuration files to deal with that addition. If the YaST part isn’t done, the configuration element will be blown away the next time someone runs YaST and does anything to the sendmail config. In my mind, it just creates more work for no significant benefit for a server OS.

Sure, you don’t have to use YaST, but there’s always the threat that someone will, and as soon as you color outside those lines, the chances of something going wrong when YaST is run becomes a certainty.

And now VMware might buy Novell, or at least buy the Suse side of things. Fantastic — this means I’m going to have to deal with Suse even more now. It was OK when the VMware/Novell partnership was announced; even though Suse became the officially preferred OS to build virtual appliances, nobody paid much attention and most contributed appliances were built on Ubuntu or CentOS. If VMware buys Suse, that might change, and not for the better.

There’s a definite place for Suse Linux in the world, primarily in all-Novell shops and run by those who need the helping hand that YaST provides. I begrudge nothing, but reserve the right to grumble mightily when I have to deal with them.

That’s why the idea of VMware owning Suse just doesn’t sound like a good match to me. The world’s most advanced virtualization technology coupled with an also-ran Linux distro? No thanks.

This story, “Dear VMware: Please don’t buy Novell,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com.