There is an awful lot of news piling up because of LinuxWorld. Instead of waiting until Saturday and then unloading a huge pile (attention span issues), here's an unusual (as in out-of-sequence) digest of positive Novell news.

The week began with an announcement from a company that supports Novell.

File Replication Pro, the leading cross platform application for file replication and synchronization, announced today that it has achieved Novell Ready status for its file replication and synchronization product line. File Replication Pro has been validated and enhanced to work with Novell Netware and SUSE Linux Platforms.

With LinuxWorld 'in progress', it is worth mentioning Novell's role as well.

Novell sponsors the first-ever one-day training session for Linux “newbies” at LinuxWorld

Novell's Linux ads, which were mentioned last week, are now available in the form of whitepaper pages [1, 2].

OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE 10.2 earned a praise from a long-time SUSE user.

The next few screen shots show the M680 at 'play'. openSuse 10.2 shows considerable polish over Suse Linux 10.0. I look forward to the final release of openSuse 10.3, and hope to upgrade all my openSuse boxes to this latest release.

Susan took Alpha 7 of openSUSE 10.3 for a test drive and, as her comment to me indicates, things have gotten much better.

So, all in all, it appears to me that openSUSE 10.3 is shaping up. We're still really early in the development process, so there's plenty time left. Things are looking better and working better for the most part. I get more excited each release but this one has really raised my pulse rate. I can hardly wait for final.

Only moments ago, the beta of openSUSE 10.3 was released. That was fast.

On the second anniversary of the creation of the openSUSE™ project, the community program this week marked two new milestones — the availability of the first beta of openSUSE 10.3 and the continued growth of the openSUSE Build Service.

If you are associated with OpenSUSE, or if you happen to be a user of the operating system, this message might be of interest to you. Here is a fragment.

openSUSE Guiding Principles (short version) ===========================================

We are...

... a community that provides free and easy access to Free and Open Source Software. We innovate, integrate, polish, document, distribute, maintain and support one of the world's best Linux distributions. We are working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source community.

We want to...

- create the world's best Linux distribution - make users happy - foster innovation - be open and work transparently - work together with upstream projects - collaborate with other communities - have a lot of fun!

We value...

- free software - an open development process - openness - choice - standards - quality - transparency - our users - respect for others and their work

Such announcements and ambition bring regret to heart (w.r.t. Boycott Novell), but remember that our criticism is directed at management-level decisions, not developers. We have said it many, many times before.

OEMs and SLED

Novell received some wonderful news with reassurance that SUSE preinstalls from Lenovo will replace the older offer which was nothing but certification.

The laptops are slated to go on sale in the fourth quarter of this year and will be sold to Lenovo's business customers as well as to consumers.

Lenovo made a similar announcement last year, but it retracted soon afterwards. It then promised and committed to very little (only certification). As we said before in this Web site, Microsoft's involvement was possibly to blame. As Ron Hovsepian indicated, Microsoft uses scare tactics to discourage OEMs that show interest in Linux. Remember that Lenovo also offers Ubuntu and Fedora certification with their latest Thinkpad.

There are also SLED preinstalls by Dell in China.

As part of this keynote, Kettler announced that Dell was expanding its end user focused efforts to China with the addition of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop for that market.

Novell and IBM had a little desktop flirt that resulted in intersection. It might also help OpenDocument format adoption.

The "open collaboration client" includes Lotus Notes 8, Sametime instant messaging and IBM's Lotus lightweight productivity applications, which natively support the OpenDocument format. The companies developed a one-click install process for Novell's desktop Linux.

While the following isn't truly a case involving an OEM, it is worth mentioning as well. Wyse has just added SUSE to its thin client lineup.

The announcement appears timed to counter competitor HP's recent investment in Linux-based thin client computing. HP last month revealed plans to acquire Neoware, an early leader in Linux-based network computing. If approved, the deal would bring HP close to Neoware's claimed 39 percent of the global thin client market, HP officials said.

Servers

Novell grew closer to IBM with the following announcement.

"At the opening of the LinuxWorld/Next Generation Data Center trade show in San Francisco, IBM and Novell today announced a new agreement to join forces to capture a larger piece of the growing open source application server market. Under the agreement, Novell will deliver and support WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, making it the industry's most comprehensive open source-based server offering.

This confirms that Red Hat is not necessarily IBM's 'favourite child'.

Novell has some new features in its management solutions.

Full-lifecycle management for SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell running Xen virtualization is also available with this version.

A few weeks ago we included a video that shows and dissects ELCOT's migration to SUSE Linux. Novell has issued a press release to say more about it. The text is boasting some big figures (30,000 desktops and 1,880 servers).

Miscellany

Novell has published another self-praising press release. It talks about its position in client management suites".

Novell today announced its systems management solution, Novell€® ZENworks€® Suite, was recognized as a strong performer in the July 2007 report, The Forrester Wave: Client Management Suites, Q3 '07.

It also has a new partner. Here is the press release, which is quoted verbatim. _________________________________________________________ SteelEye Teams with Novell

SAN FRANCISCO—August 7, 2007--SteelEye Technology€®, a provider of award-winning data protection and application availability solutions for Linux and Windows, announced today that it has become a Gold member of Novell PartnerNet for Technology Partners.

"Novell congratulates SteelEye on becoming a Gold Technology Partner," said Justin Steinman, director of marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell. "SteelEye is a key player in high availability solutions, and we are pleased to be partnering with them to bring LifeKeeper support to SUSE Linux Enterprise customers."

The partnership grants SteelEye access to technical information and resources needed to enable its suite of high availability clustering, data replication and disaster recovery solutions for future SUSE Linux Enterprise offerings. SteelEye also acknowledges its commitment to provide support for future SUSE Linux Enterprise-based environments within its LifeKeeper Protection Suite for Linux.

“This alliance is a powerful combination,” said Bonni-Jo Salazar, Vice President of Strategic Alliances for SteelEye. “SteelEye has a long history of support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with a significant number of deployments throughout the world. We are pleased to formalize this support through our Novell partnership.”

About SteelEye LifeKeeper for Linux

LifeKeeper for Linux supports the building of active/active and active/standby clusters for application high availability configurations of up to 32 nodes using x86, ia64, EM64T and Opteron-based servers from Dell, HP, IBM and others or using virtual machines built using VMware Infrastructure or Xen. LifeKeeper supports both shared nothing configurations using data replication and shared storage configurations which can be built using direct-attached shared SCSI, Fibre Channel SANs or Network Attached Storage devices. LifeKeeper clusters may be deployed either within a Local Area Network or across a WAN for disaster recovery. The ability to cluster together physical and virtual servers provides powerful flexibility in the configurations that can be built.

LifeKeeper for Linux delivers out-of-the-box application protection for Oracle, SAP, MySQL, Apache, Sendmail, Rational ClearCase, Websphere MQ, NFS, SAMBA and others. Through the use of LifeKeeper Extender, any application can be easily protected by LifeKeeper.

About SteelEye Technology, Inc.

SteelEye, a subsidiary of SIOS Technology (www.sios.com), is the leading provider of data and application availability management solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery for Linux and Windows. The SteelEye LifeKeeper family of application-focused data replication, high availability clustering and disaster recovery solutions are priced and architected to enable enterprises of all sizes to ensure continuous availability of business-critical applications, servers and data. _____________________________________

Last but not least, Novell has some new Web seminars.

Novell is hosting a series of free web seminars in August, September and October focusing on our identity, security and systems management solutions.

This ought to cover news from the past 3-4 days, but if you know about something significant that we missed, please add a comment or two. ;-)