09.20.08

Do-No-Evil Saturday – Part II: SUSE and Ron Hovsepian at Interop

Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Ron Hovsepian, Security, SLES/SLED, Turbolinux at 2:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

There is a lot of news to go through today, so the following post is just a quick rundown.

Wyse

The most significant press release (for Novell) was probably this one about Wyse.

Wyse Technology, the global leader in thin computing, and Novell today announced the joint delivery of Wyse Enhanced SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise, the next-generation of Linux* operating system designed for thin computing environments and available only on Wyse desktop and mobile thin client devices. Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise is a powerful combination of Wyse’s extensive experience in thin computing and the ease of use, flexibility and security of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise will be available pre-loaded on the Wyse thin client devices in Q4 2008.

There were many short reports about this, including:

1. Wyse and Novell announce delivery of Linux Thin Client based on SUSE Linux Enterprise

Wyse Technology, a developer of thin client systems, and Novell Inc (Nasdaq:NOVL) jointly announced on 16 September the delivery of Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise, available for Wyse desktop and mobile thin client devices.

2. Novell and Wyse develop Linux thin client

Novell has partnered with thin-client computing provider Wyse Technology to jointly develop a Linux operating system for desktop and mobile thin client devices.

3. Thin client leader adds Linux option

The world’s largest thin-client vendor has taken aggressive steps in the fast-growing market for Linux-based thin clients. Wyse has partnered with Novell to create “Wyse-enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise,” a virtualization-ready thin-client OS expected to ship in Q4, pre-loaded on four N50L mobile thin client models.

Palamida helped generate some scare with this article, which also mentions Wyse very briefly.

Wyse, which today announced a deal with Novell to distribute Suse Linux Enterprise on its thin clients, has had to tread carefully with its proprietary code as it has deepened its reliance on open source components.

A known Microsoft shill, Maureen O’Gara [1, 2], wrote about this too.

The operating system includes the GNOME desktop, Firefox browser and a terminal emulator as well as pre-built technologies for connecting to thin computing architectures such as the VDM client from VMware, the ICA client from Citrix and the RDP client from Microsoft.

It’s interesting to see how the Web site appends her old (and very biased) articles about Hans Reiser (twice even) as though it’s trying to make a statement.

SLED

Moving on, here you have a newly-uploaded video showing the SLED-powered MSI Wind U90.

SUSE also earns a bit of a rave in the following new blog post.

Novell divides its SUSE Linux products into Enterprise and Personal. This is essentially the distinction between the versions that are sold with a paid-for software maintenance system and those that are not. The Personal category now consists of just one product, SUSE Linux Professional. (In the past there was a cut-down version of SUSE Linux Professional known as SUSE Linux Personal; with the release of 9.3 this product was dropped. Do not confuse Novell’s customer category Personal with SUSE’s former product SUSE Linux Personal.)

Interop

The gathering in New York was not focused on GNU/Linux specifically, but some people span it that way.

Novell CEO Ronald Hovsepian said Wednesday that he uses a Linux-based desktop while on the job and that Novell’s use of open source software internally “has saved the company a lot of money.” Hovsepian made the comments as he delivered a keynote presentation at the Interop technology conference and exhibition in New York.

It’s hard to believe that an entire article was written just to say that the head of a company which developers GNU/Linux also eats some of its dog food, so to speak. On the other hand…

More seriously now, people in Linux Today have already commented on this.

it is the least they can do… it would be completely disappointing but not surprising if he was using Windows.

Also:

And TODAY it is “news” that their CEO claims to use Linux?

I think the bigger story is that Novell does not seem to have finished the migration yet.

This comment is particularly informative:

I also suspect that the Linux desktop Hovsepian refers to is probably an unused show piece setting in his office … a dog and pony show to be trotted out when ever questions like “Do you use Linux?” are asked.

When asked why HE initiated the “deal” he replied that he could not sell Linux against Windows. If he could not “sell” Linux against Windows it was because he did not USE Linux… he used Windows as his primary or only desktop. I suspect he still does.

Sean Michael Kerner covered some of his own takeaways from Hovsepian’s talk.

Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian took the stage at Interop this morning and boldly told the capacity crowd that open source is for them.

Another takeaway from his talks is this:

Virtualization and cloud computing will help companies accomplish more by breaking the physical bonds of an IT infrastructure and its users, executives from Cisco and Novell proclaimed this week during their keynote addresses at Interop New York. But caveats such as heightened security threats must be overcome in order to fully benefit from this new computing paradigm, they warned.

David Berlind. who was nearby at the tme, adds a lot of details and a photo.

Hovsepian (pictured below) practically harkened back to the early days of Interop when the event was primarily about interoperability. The major them of his presentation (and clearly Novell’s strategy going forward) was “making IT work as one” and one of the key pillars to that strategy — a pillar that Hovsepian says Novell is positioned to help with — is interoperability. Hovsepian talked about how, IT organizations should be leveraging interoperability and standards to seamlessly blend infrastructures at various layers in the IT stack. For example, virtual systems and physical systems.

The more comprehensive article from Sean Michael Kerner is not particularly focused on Novell, but it does cover some key points.

Those networks you manage aren’t just about moving simple data around any more. That’s the message that leading executives from IBM, Cisco and Novell delivered at the Interop trade show today during the morning keynote sessions.

[...]

Managing it all, the social networking, virtualization and platform issues are becoming increasingly complex. Novell’s CEO Ron Hovsepian noted that ease of management is critical for making everything work. He argued that making management as easy as an iPod should be an operational goal.

Competition

Slashdot gave a boost to an article which gives the impression that Windows is catching up in supercomputing. Given the author of the article, there’s no room for complaints. It’s interesting to find Novell there, but not very surprising.

While technically speaking, the CX1 minisuper is certified to run Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5 and can certainly run Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (which is the preferred Linux on Cray’s high-end, massively parallel Opteron boxes, the XT4 and XT5, and which has not been certified on the CX1), Red Hat and Novell were not invited to the CX1 launch party, while Burton Smith, now a technical fellow for parallel computing at Microsoft and formerly the chief scientist at Cray and the company that ate it in March 2000, Tera Computer, as well as Kyril Faenov, general manager of the Windows HPC business at Microsoft, were given great swaths of time during the launch to espouse the virtues of Windows HPC Server 2008. You do the math.

Lenovo, which recently threw SUSE out of its ThinkPads, has for some unknown reason favoured SUSE for servers. No Red Hat yet? How come?

Back in August, The VAR Guy reported that Lenovo was preparing to launch its first servers. Our resident blogger expected the operating system options to include Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE Linux. Turns out, Red Hat wasn’t invited to the Lenovo server party — at least not initially.

Here is an interesting new headline from Pakistan (old news though): Microsoft To Invest Up To $100 Million In Novell Linux

Microsoft said Wednesday that it has expanded a partnership with Novell under which it purchases certificates for Novell Linux support and resells them to customers at a markup.

Microsoft has its reasons to inject money into Novell. It wants to make it the “Linux of choice” in order to injure companies like Red Hat. It seems as though Teradata uses SUSE.

The 2550 scales up to 140 terabytes and is powered by quad-core Intel processors. The system ships with 64-bit Novell SUSE Linux, storage and the Teradata 12 database, which ships with all the company’s appliances. Teradata’s portfolio also includes the Data Mart Appliance 550 and the Active Enterprise Data Warehouse 5550.

Novell showed some presence in this year’s Software Freedom Day, even in Asia. It’s probably Sun which was most prominent though.

The public event on Saturday has assembled a line-up of speakers from various open source vendors, including Novell and Red Hat, as well as smaller local organizations.

Turbolinux

Stepping aside from Novell for just a moment, Turbolinux Client 2008 seems to be making the rounds, but apart from that, except for all the articles in foreign languages, there are just several security notices. From the past week:

• Turbolinux Security Announcement – Postfix denial of service (11/Sep/2008)
• Turbolinux Security Update Fixes Postfix Denial of Service Vulnerability
• Turbolinux Security Update Fixes CGIWrap Cross Site Scripting Issue
• Turbolinux Security Announcement – Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability (httpd)

There is a lot more to go though, so the next post might take a while to write. █

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