Bonum Certa Men Certa

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: OpenSUSE... Plus a Little Bit of SLED and Xandros

OpenSUSE



BEING A PERIOD of holidays, not much has been heralded by companies, so commercial distributions did not receive as much coverage as an (relatively) open-ended project like OpenSUSE.

Some more people have been installing OpenSUSE over the holidays and they wrote about their experiences. Marc Fearby believes that OpenSUSE defeats Mandriva and he defends this position by comparing different versions of KDE4.



Even though I cited one more not-so-good aspect to openSUSE than good, I am very impressed with it. It seems much more polished than Mandriva, thanks to the Folder View support in KDE 4 as well as the installer and YaST overall. If openSUSE could find some way to improve mouse support then I’ll even pay for my next version or donate or whatever is the done thing to show one’s appreciation. Like most distros, it’s always the video, sound, and peripherals that are still the major issues, so I hope for some improvement in this area overall (particularly getting rid of all those sound systems). But I’m not going to back to Windows. No way!


Here is another experience with OpenSUSE 11.1.

If I get that configured correctly, I'll be totally happy. Sound works, wireless network works (but it's still more convenient to use ifup instead of network manager, but the 11.0 bug where I'd have to restart the wireless network after booting to get it working is fixed. KDE looks great and feel very stable and I'm already recompiling KOffice.


Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols published a comparison involving what he considers to be new big releases and the article appeared in several IDG-owned Web sites. He also mentioned SLED here and so did Jack Germain, who took on a sub-notebooks journey.

Techie Moe, who is one of the harshest reviewers out there (bar Béranger perhaps) took a look at the latest release of OpenSUSE.

SuSE and I have a long and generally pleasant history. I was one of those guys who would actually go to my local electronics store and purchase the new boxed version every six months or so.

At least, that was the story with SuSE up until version 10.3. At that point, things started to go decidedly downhill, and it hasn't been until relatively recently that I'm beginning to feel comfortable again.

Unfortunately, this release didn't help my already shaky resolve with openSuSE. Read on to see why.


Here is another one.

There have been mixed reviews for OpenSuSE 11.1, some lauding it while others panning it for a disaster almost as bad as the 10.1 release mostly surrounding KDE-4 desktop choice. The desktop environment is so much a part of a distro nowadays that normal users do not usually make the distinction between what is the distro and what is the desktop environment. For them, KDE or OpenSuSE they are both the same. For me I applaud the OpenSuSE team for taking a brave new step ahead! KDE-4 has it's faults no doubt but as usual I put my total trust in the OpenSource community to mold into something better than the current 3.5.x. I will still look forward to keeping OpenSuSE as my main working distro.


Moving on to some technical writings, here is one person's experience adopting the very latest release.

Over the Christmas I set about updating from OpenSuSE 11.0 to OpenSuSE 11.1. I always like to have the latest and greatest distro :-)


There are those who experiment with the unfinished implementation of the ext4 file-system and there are also some new HOWTOs out there. Nothing truly exciting though, but there are more picks at the OpenSUSE Web site, whose summary/overview is:

* openSUSE Education available SLE10 and 11.1 * Zimbra Mail Server Training in Indonesia * Q&A with Joe Brockmeier * Forums: Getting VMware to run on openSUSE 11.1 * Best of Newsletter 2008


SUSE (SLES/SLED)



The H-P-SUSE relationship made a lot of headlines last month and it was mentioned very briefly in this article from The Independent.

To provide customers with more cost-effective and secure computing options, HP, the leader in worldwide Linux server shipments and revenue, has introduced a new desktop offering with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell on the HP Compaq dc5850.


Sean Michael Kerner sums up a year and also comments on Novell.

In 2009, Novell will roll out Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 its first update since SLES 10 in 2006.

[...]

On the legal front, SCO — yes, it will still exist in 2009 — will continue its myriad appeals against Novell and attempt to press for a court date with IBM.


Sean also approached a Novell employee for a comment on Linux:

"The ext4 filesystem, the successor to the ext3 filesystem, has been marked stable enough for people to start using and relying on," Novell Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman told InternetNews.com.

[...]

"We now have a proper memory manager for video memory, the GEM [Graphics Execution Manager] memory manager," Kroah-Hartman said. "This gives Linux much better graphics performance than it previously had."


Xandros



Some reviews of the Eee PC carried on coming and from the Indian press came this article which mentions Xandros by name (that becomes more of a rarity because of Microsoft tricks).

The computer has built-in wireless, a LAN port plus a couple USB ports, and with pre-installed Linux Xandros it’s plug-and-play ready. Just flip it open, hit the on switch and about 10 seconds later (it loads fast!) the laptop is ready for use.


Viyya is one company that we mentioned before because it has connections with Xandros [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and this latest press release (also found here) sheds more light on their relationship.

Viyya Technologies, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: VYON),the developer and marketer of the world's most advanced, web-based information management application, announced an update from John Bay onprogress relating to activities from 2008 and plans for the Internet Search and Discovery marketplace in 2009:

[...]

First, we will continue to customize VIYYA(TM) and build the VIYYA Information Store with Xandros in the NetBook marketplace. This contrac twill provide a lucrative revenue stream especially with VIYYA's new advertising based model coming in 2009.


That's all about SUSE and Novell from the past week. Next week will be busier for sure.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October