Linux company SUSE outbids competitors for fast-growing start-up Rancher Labs

• Linux company SUSE outbids competitors for fast-growing start-up Rancher Labs

  SUSE, a Linux distribution company controlled by private equity firm EQT, has agreed to acquire Rancher Labs, a start-up with technology that helps organizations run software in virtual containers across many servers. The companies announced the deal Wednesday but didn't disclose the terms. Two people familiar with the deal said SUSE is paying $600 million to $700 million. The transaction suggests that even during a recession, demand remains high for technology that can enable companies to operate more efficiently. Talks between the companies began in the spring, and the process became competitive with additional bids, Ursheet Parikh, a partner at Rancher backer Mayfield Fund, told CNBC on Tuesday. There were "lots of Zoom calls," Parikh said. In the past few years, with the rise of start-ups such as Docker, containers became a trendy alternative to more traditional virtualization technology for running applications on each computer server in a company data center. Amazon, Microsoft and other cloud providers came out with services that developers can use to place code in containers, and in 2017 SUSE introduced its own service for managing containers. The companies haven't finalized integration plans as the deal still faces regulatory approval.

• SUSE to Acquire Rancher Labs, Creating World’s Largest Organization Exclusively Dedicated to Powering Digital Transformation With Open Source and Cloud Native Solutions

  Today, SUSE embarks on a new chapter in our incredible 28-year journey. I am thrilled to share that, SUSE has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Rancher Labs, a market-leading, Enterprise Kubernetes Management vendor based in Cupertino, California.    This is an incredible moment for SUSE and for our industry, as two open source leaders join forces to create the world’s largest independent organization dedicated exclusively to powering digital transformation with open source and cloud native solutions. I want to share my perspective on why we chose Rancher, and how this acquisition will benefit our customers, partners, and communities.

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Qt Creator 4.12.4 released

We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.12.4 ! In this release of Qt Creator we fixed C++ debugging on iOS devices, and adapted MCU support to the new Qt for MCU 1.3 release. Have a look at our change log for a more complete list of improvements. The opensource version is available on the Qt download page under "Qt Creator", and you find commercially licensed packages on the Qt Account Portal. Qt Creator 4.12.4 is also available as an update in the online installer. Please post issues in our bug tracker. You can also find us on IRC on #qt-creator on chat.freenode.net, and on the Qt Creator mailing list.

AWOW AK41 Mini Desktop PC – Running Linux – Week 1

This is a weekly blog chronicling my experiences of running the AWOW AK41 Mini Desktop PC on Linux. The small-form-factor revolution began in the 2000s. Many desktops have reduced from half-size towers to compact cubes to, in their most extreme reduction, sticks not much larger than a USB flash drive. How’s that been viable? A significant factor has been graphics acceleration and other essential features being subsumed under the CPU. AWOW has sent us their AK41 Mini Desktop PC. It’s essentially a tiny full-featured computer. It retails at $239.99 / £239.99 and available to purchase from Amazon. Mini PCs typically ship with Windows 10. The AWOW AK41 is no exception. And there’s no option to have a different operating system pre-installed on this machine. That’s commonplace. There’s often a paucity of information available as to whether small-form-factor machines have any hardware issues running the machine on a different operating system. Sometimes, issues can take a while to surface, which often aren’t identified in a standard review. Rather than carrying out a typical review, this series aims to be an in-depth examination of the Mini PC purely from a Linux perspective.