Last Friday afternoon I sat down for an hour with Joe Brockmeier, community manager for openSUSE, to talk with him about SUSE 11 and the open source world in general. It was a bit rambly, but that was part of the fun: We stumbled across a whole slew of key truths about open source along the way.

So who's using openSUSE? I asked Joe. "Obviously, the existing [Linux] users, but also the disaffected Vista users, and people who really want an operating system that's suitable for them but are really sick of Windows." (The appeal to existing Windows users can be easily seen in a number of openSUSE features, such as the menuing system that's pretty explicitly patterned after the self-sorting Start menu.)

Novell also doesn't want to be left out of the Linux-powered subnotebook race. It's got SUSE in two devices -- the MSI Wind ($399 MSRP Linux, $499 MSRP Windows XP) and the $499 MSRP HP Mini-Note (which also ships with Vista). My bets are on this being how the masses get their Linux fix, especially given that more than one distribution is showing its hand in this space.

That got into a parallel subject: how users are going to demand a Linux distribution that includes things like DVD and MP3 playback by default. If they find Linux is free and open, but that such things on top of it are not, how will that affect their decisions?

"Five years ago, you didn't have a really good [FOSS] music and video management tool. Now we have Banshee [available in SUSE 11]. But I think there is room, as we expand our market, for people to write proprietary applications for Linux and make money with them." He did agree that the market may simply be too young and too small for that to happen right now -- a "chicken and egg problem", as he put it. "I think there has to be a couple of ISVs and software vendors who are the early adopters, just as consumers might be." And again, my guess is that the above-mentioned "netbook" niche would be a fine place to make that happen.

He also described how hardware reporting on behalf of the operating system (via Smolt, for instance, which is available in SUSE but not enabled by default) could in turn compel hardware makers to become better open source players. "If you have a hundred thousand Linux users buying your laptop and they don't support their chipset on Linux ... " ... a compelling scenario for the hardware makers to do exactly that. It also helps to resolve another thornier issue, namely getting detailed statistics on how many people are actually using Linux.

All this also connected back with the reasons why SUSE has MP3 playback (although not DVD playback) as one of the things that's more immediately available to users, as opposed to a distro like Fedora where MP3 playback has to be added externally and by hand. "You have to get people using Linux before you can convince them of any compelling arguments in favor of open source," he stated, and having these features available with as little pain as possible seems a good way to do that. (One of his favorite tricks for hooking people on Linux is to show off things like the 3-D desktop effects, and then drop the "yes, and it's free, too" bombshell.)

"Of course we're going to get people who are attracted by free," he added, "but I think that as Linux grows, there will also be people willing to pay for convenience if it offers value." Folks who are not willing to pay for proprietary software, though, need to do the right thing and not pirate. "I got into a big argument with my brother about this -- he wanted to use Photoshop and didn't want to pay for it, and I said 'No'." The choice for him was clear-cut: pay for Photoshop, or bite the bullet and use a free (if not completely featureful) substitute.

On differences between SUSE and other Linux distributions: "None of us [the Linux vendors / distributors] disagree on the big things; it's how to get there where we diverge."

On Sun re: OpenSolaris: "They're 10 years too late to create a community [around OpenSolaris]. I hate to say anything about about a free Unix because I feel like I'm kicking a puppy, but on the other hand I'm very disappointed that they can't just bite the bullet and participate in Linux. The work that's done for Solaris is done only for Solaris. And if you're a customer, do you really want to adopt an open source OS where the only real vendor option is Sun? It's great to work with Sun in community projects where Sun is an equal member, but not as much fun to work in a community that is controlled by Sun."

We had to split after only an hour, but we vowed to get back in touch later in the season. Maybe by then I'll have scored an openSUSE-powered machine for a closer look.

Tomorrow, I'll have one more bit of conversation from the Red Hat show floor, with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation.