03.22.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday – Part I: SUSE News, Including BrainShare Announcements
There are buckets of reports owing to BrainShare. A day may not be enough to cover them all, so it’s likely that BrainShare focus will come tomorrow. In the mean time, here are the news about OpenSUSE and SLED/SLES.
Let’s start with something relatively entertaining. A new advert was coughed up at YouTube just under a day ago.
OpenSUSE
As you may already know, FOSDEM 2008 finished quite recently. A couple of week after it had ended, videos and slides were made available online. It’s all about OpenSUSE.
The eighth Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting (commonly known as FOSDEM) takes place during the last week-end (23&24) of February 2008 in the city of Brussels, Belgium. It’s an annual 2-day event hosting talks, tutorials, and booth for the free software/open source community. It is organized by volunteers at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Access to all parts of FOSDEM is free of charge (but donations and sponsors are welcome to help fund the event).
More here about KDE4.
The video recordings and slides from the openSUSE dev room at FOSDEM2008 are finally up: http://en.opensuse.org/FOSDEM2008. You’ll find some openSUSE KDE 4 slides there as well as many other interesting talks.
OpenSUSE 11.0 is now officially at alpha 3 phase.
After four regular weeks and one hack week after Alpha 2, we are very happy to announce openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3.
Here is a good new review of OpenSuse 10.3.
All in all I am very impressed with openSuse 10.3. Its an improvement 10.2 and is definitely moving forward at a noticeable pace. I am using it as my current production RoR development environment and I haven’t stopped smiling since I installed it. openSuse 10.3 is definitely worth a look at if you are looking at an alternative to your current desktop OS.
Bill Beebe is optimistic about OpenSUSE this time around.
I’m still not sure about KDE 4. While I have no problem living on the bleeding edge, I tend to like my bleeding edge reasonably useful. KDE 4 is just different enough from KDE 3 that I would tend to install KDE 3 on openSUSE 11. But then again, my impressions are with a rapidly evolving desktop, and KDE 4 is advancing with incredible speed. Who knows how it might behave 30 days, or even a week from now?
I knowingly tempt the Fates by saying this, but based on what little exposure I’ve had to it so far, I think openSUSE 11 just might be a really good release.
And then there are the positive experiences with OpenSUSE on a Dell Latitude D505.
The quest to get GNU/Linux to run well on a laptop has been a long running challenge. In this piece, Ed looks at his success with OpenSUSE on a Dell Latitude laptop.
An OpenSUSE-based JeOS (pronounced juice) is now out there. The name was first heard when Canonical introduced it.
A new project called Lime JeOS (LInux Minimal Edition Just enough Operating System) has been created at the openSUSE community.
For KDE4 enthusiasts, a new version of KDE Four Live is now available.
It has been over a month since the last version and it’s still a month until KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 so it seems a good time to create a new Live CD with the openSUSE KDE 4.0.66 snapshot packages.
More about KDE4 at BrainShare here. It’s just a short blurb really.
The KDE Team here at Novell have worked our KPats off all over KDE 4 to make it great and the Novell customer base deserve to know about it.
Francis Giannaros has got some more bits of new information in the newsletter.
Issue 14 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out![0]
In this week’s issue:
* Videos and Slides from FOSDEM 2008
* openSUSE to Participate in Google Summer of Code 2008
* Novell Free Hugs at CeBit 2008
* KIWI-LTSP 0.3.14 Now Out
* LimeJeOS, the openSUSE-based JeOS is Born
* Banshee 1.0Alpha1 is Available with 1-Click-Install
* New KDE Four Live and updated KDE 4.1 Snapshot Packages
* HP to preload SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on Notebooks, Desktops
* In Tips and Tricks: Best Practices for Editing Configuration Files
* Upcoming: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3 (today)
[0] http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/14
Have a lot of fun!
– Francis Giannaros
Appliances
Here is an interesting new thing. Novell is now entering the field of custom-made/tailored appliances and applying these old principles to SUSE.
The next version of Novell’s Suse Linux operating system will make it easier for ISVs to create software appliances, the company said at the Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City.
SLED
There is quite a lot here in terms of development. At risk of excessive repetition, let us go through some of the many reports. Fujitsu and SLED seem to have somewhat of a love affair which revolves around certification. Four of Fujitsu’s laptops are listed.
Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation announced at opening day of BrainShare 2008 that the Fujitsu LifeBook U810, LifeBook T2010, LifeBook P1620 ultra-portable convertible notebooks and the LifeBook S6510 thin and light notebook have been YES Certified by Novell. The certification means the notebooks have been stringently tested for compatibility with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell.
The bigger news are the preinstalls of SLED 10 by Hewlett-Packard. Steven Vaughan does not hold his breath yet.
I would have liked to have been able to tell you in great detail exactly what desktops and laptops will soon be coming from Hewlett-Packard equipped with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.
We will probably elaborate on this tomorrow.
SLED 11
Novell has started previewing and throwing around some big hints about SLED 11, which had the press humming for a while. One reporter described it as some kind of a war on Sun and Red Hat (it makes an eye-catching headline, doesn’t it?).
The next version of Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server will focus on migration technologies and virtualisation, in order to entice users from Unix and take market share from Red Hat, according to a roadmap announced at the company’s BrainShare meeting in Salt Lake City.
Here is the promotional twist.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 to focus on innovation in mission-critical data center technologies, UNIX migration capabilities, virtualization, interoperability, green computing and desktop Linux
For your reading pleasure, here is a ‘buffer overflow’ comprising other reports:
1. Novell Starts Talking SLES 11
Among the company’s lofty goals is to make SLES 11 available as an appliance that will be supported by a new tool set.
2. Suse Linux Enterprise 11 – Lean, Mean and Green!
Novell announces development plans for the next generation of Suse Linux, promising mission-critical abilities in a power-friendly package.
3. Novell’s SUSE Linux 11 to come in appliance, embedded, real-time editions
Novell opened the kimono on its development plans for SUSE Linux Enterprise Linux 11 at Brainshare 2008 this week but let it be known the product won’t ship until 2009 or possibly 2010. In fact, the Cambridge, Mass. won’t even provide a planned ship date until the end of this year.
4. Novell previews SuSE Enterprise Linux 11
Novell has revealed details of the next version of its flagship SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 platform.
[...]
SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 will also run on desktops in thick- and thin-client modes and technical workstations.
5. Novell emphasizes integration with Suse Linux 11
The company president sits down with ComputerWorld Canada to discuss the latest update to its enterprise open source operating system, while a Canadian customer discusses his desktop deployment
To finish off, here is a new Geek My SLED video. It’s part of a series that they had in previous years (at least one year back).
Linspire
This post is not about Linspire, but then again, there is not much to be said about it anyway. Here is a quick review of Linspire.
Having been round the houses with Linux systems I’ve eventually ended up back with Linspire.
The CNR press releases keep coming, but no reports appear to be covering these announcements, which are non-events really.
Linspire, Inc. developer of CNR.com, an easy-to-use, one-click digital software delivery service for desktop Linux software, and Basilisk Games, an independent game developer, today announced the immediate availability of Eschalon: Book I for Freespire 2.0, Linspire 6.0, Ubuntu 7.04 & 7.10 (32 bit) desktop Linux users.
As you can imagine, there’s loads more to go through. Skip the “Do-No-Evil Saturday”-labeled posts if you have no interest in general Novell news. █
