Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part II: SLED at H-P, SLES at IBM, and Xandros/Scalix

Chameleon tail



Summary: Another glance at H-P's embrace of SLED 11; other notable news about SUSE and Xandros

SLED



SOME days ago we commented on H-P's support of SLED. Further to that, all the following items mention Novell and SLED in the same context:





IDG reviewed SLED 11 and had some good words to share.

SLED's dual listing of certain applications in both the YaST resource management window and in the Control Panel had us scratching our heads on what to pick out of the many open source applications included with the bundle. This confusion extends to having Hardware>Control Center choices duplicated as Network Devices under YaST as well. There's no real harm in this double listing, it's just confusing.


SLED 11 was also reviewed by IT Pro, which gave it high marks.

The answer to the question of whether you could eliminate Windows on your desktop clients and replace them with SLED 11 is yes. There are very few remaining issues that will prevent SLED working with an existing Windows/Active Directory infrastructure. If your desktop systems are purely used for standard administration and Microsoft Office tasks, SLED 11 will do it, albeit at the potential cost of grumbling employees. For any worker with specific non-Office application requirements it’s more difficult of course, but SLED 11 is a good move along the road to complete interoperability.


SLES



On the server side, SUSE was not mentioned so much, but the following articles about 'clouds' showed IBM's role in spreading SLES:

i. Amazon EC2 Offers IBM Apps by the Hour

Amazon's Thursday announcement follows a February announcement of a partnership between Amazon and IBM to provide software developers pay-as-you-go access to development and production versions of IBM Information Management database servers, IBM Lotus content management, and IBM WebSphere portal, as well as middleware products, all running on Novell's SUSE Linux on Amazon EC2.


From Timothy Prickett Morgan:

ii. IBM slips Power6+ into racks, blades

IBM can throw more memory at each thread than an x64 box can, at least for now. And on virtualized server workloads, this is what matters as much (and perhaps more) than clock speeds. The Power 550 can support up to 80 logical partitions, which can run IBM's AIX or i operating systems or the Linuxes from Red Hat and Novell. It has the same I/O slot configuration and 3.5-inch disk bays as the Power 520, and its rPerf performance ranges from 21.18 (two cores running at 5 GHz) to 78.6 (eight cores running at 5 GHz).


iii. IBM unloads Nehalem towers, clusters

Anyway, with this week's announcement, the Nehalem EP servers announced in March - the x3550 M2 and x3650 M2 racks, the HS22 blade, and the dx360 M2 hybrid - can all be the foundation of a Cluster 1350. IBM can put Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, or Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008.


There is also some new information about SLE training for administrators.

Novell Linux Certifications

Novell recently rolled out one new Linux certification, the Certified Linux Desktop Administrator (CLDA), and is expected to soon go live with the Certified Linux Administrator (CLA), as well (the exam numbers are 050-708 and 050-710, respectively). Both consist of a single exam on SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 that's administered through either Prometric or VUE testing centers.


Xandros



The company bets and spends heavily on Presto at the moment. It still received some overage, e.g. from CNET Asia:

Though there are several "instant on" solutions out there, like Lenovo's Splash-top on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (pictured), Asus' ExpressGate and Xandros' Presto, you cannot actually boot into Windows immediately. Instead, what you are booting into is an alternative stripped-down Linux environment. Though there are many fctors involved, one of the reason Windows is unable to achieve instant boot times is because it has many background processes which require the system to run through many more lines of binary code compared with a Linux operating system.


This last sentence is poor because it shows that the writer is not IT-savvy or simply technology-illiterate. "Lines of binary code" hardly makes any sense. Here is another essay about Presto and here is the response offered to one person who is after Xandros/Eee despite the fact that Microsoft is said to be bribing ASUS for Xandros suppression.

Pasadena, CA: Hi Brian: I'm thinking about buying the ASUS EEE PC 1000 Netbook with Xandros Linux OS to avoid virus, malwares and all nasty stuffs. Do I/Should I install/use Linux anti-virus program like the free Avast Linux anti-virus program? Thank you, Don I've been reading your articles religiously :-)

Brian Krebs: I wouldn't worry about anti-virus software if you're running Xandros/Linux. Just make sure you follow best practices, such as not running the system all the time as "root". You might invest in a backup program to make an image of the drive (chances are extremely good that capability is built into the OS itself) in case something goes wrong.


Lastly, this German press release acts of a reminder that Scalix still plays a role at Xandros.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 26/10/2025: Microsoft Spies on Gamers, Open Transport Community Conference
Links for the day
Links 26/10/2025: LLM Slop / Plagiarism Programs Continue to Disappoint, CISA Layoffs Threaten Systems
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/10/2025: Gemsync and Joining the Small Web
Links for the day
India.com a Click-baiting, SEO-Spamming, Slopfarming Heap
They do this almost every day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 25, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 25, 2025
Without XBox Consoles, XBox is No More, It's Just a Brand (More Rumours of Microsoft Ending XBox, Then Laying Off Lots of Staff)
All signs indicate that Microsoft wants to "exit" the XBox business (not brand), but it does not want to publicly admit this as it would alarm staff and shareholders
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: Portugal, Midnightpub, and "Tech Right Admins"
Links for the day
Almost 2026 Already (When We Turn Twenty)
In just over a year the site will turn 20
When "Sponsored Feature" in The Register MS Means Ponzi Scheme Promotion From the Communist Party of China (CPC)
the promotion of a financial scam
Week of EPO Leaks: Workers of the EPO Are Getting a Pay Cut While Prices Rise Fast
More to come in the next few days
Microsoft is Finally Giving Up on XBox, The Chief Says the Grapes Are Sour Anyway
Microsoft loses hundreds of dollars on each XBox that it sells
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Various Slopfarms Propped up by Google News
Why can't Google News do better than this?
Links 25/10/2025: Two New Smokescreens for Scam Altman and ‘TikTok USA’ Remains in Limbo
Links for the day
Bad faith: can't change Debian Social Contract (DSC) without unanimous consent of every joint author
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Confirmed: Very Close Friend of Bill Gates and Microsoft's Biggest Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Flew the Lolita Express (a Gateway to Pedophilia), According to Bill Gates-Sponsored Seattle Times
There is no speculation or any "conspiracy theories" here;' those are verified facts
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: "The Highest Leader of The Global Civil Society Community", SSL Certificates Causing Bitrot
Links for the day
Links 25/10/2025: Target Layoffs and "Shutdown Sparks 85% Increase in US Government Cyberattacks"
Links for the day
"Big Data" Was a Big Lie
Remember "Big Data"? Remember "Data Scientists"...?
statCounter Has Been Broken for a Long Time
Considering the huge proportion of Web requests that come from LLM bots (more so this past year or two), statCounter may struggle to justify the operating costs
Techrights Anniversary Party on November 7th
Let us know if you need any accommodation-related arrangements
Trends That Must Alarm Microsoft and Mozilla
Expect Firefox to no longer be supported by various sites in the US
Why Microsoft Became the Layoffs Leader
The corporate media is projecting or signalling its own dishonesty when it tells us that Microsoft is a very "valuable" company while the data shows Microsoft is also a "market leader" in layoffs
Speaking for Ourselves and Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves
we've already published over 50,000 pages
For Second Time in a Day The Register MS Takes Money From Private Companies to Sell a Ponzi Scheme
Do not have empathy for those who have zero empathy towards you
IBM is Misleading IBM Shareholders
IBM is still all about vapourware and buzzwords
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 24, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 24, 2025
The Serial Slopper Starts Up - or Restarts - His Plagiarism Machine (LLMs)
Serial Sloppers like these don't belong in news sites. That's why he got sacked by BetaNews.
Links 24/10/2025: Esperanto Music History, Anxiety, and New Portals
Links for the day
[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Sweden, Attended by Nearly 700 People, is Now Online
The Web page is in Swedish, but the talk is in English
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com, Linux Journal, and Pet Slopfarms of Google News
Why does Google News still advance these fake sites to the top of search results?
Links 24/10/2025: Inequality Grows, Billion-Dollar Scam Center Industry
Links for the day
Links 24/10/2025: "Independent Media in Cambodia is Collapsing" and Serious F5 Breach
Links for the day
Coping With the Site Going More Mainstream
Fame is no laughing matter
They Never 'Put Down' Corporations
There are "pests" that are traded in Wall Street
21 Pages in Less Than 7 Hours is No Joking Matter
We've become a lot more effective and efficient
Correct Information is a Valued Asset in the Age of Slopfarms and Public Relations (PR) or Spin
Publishing suppressed facts is never easy
The Register MS Continues to Bag Money to Promote a Ponzi Scheme, Even Money From China
Today in the front page
analytics.usa.gov: The Only Supported Version of Windows (This Past Week) is Only Used by About 13.9% of People in the US, the Home Base of Windows
Even Vista 7 is still used more
Rust is Very Secure
If only Rust itself is secure
Who Will be Held Accountable for Breaking Ubuntu by Imposing Rust on Otherwise-Functional Programs, in Effect Replacing GNU With Proprietary Microsoft (GitHub)?
they're practical people who merely point out that a bunch of buffoons not only ruin Ubuntu but also every future distro based on Ubuntu
Generation Chaff - Phase VIII: In Summary
Like "Science" with a capital "S", what we see here commercial interests usurping everything
Generation Chaff - Phase VII: Curtailing Alternative Media
There was always an obligation - a collective duty of sorts - to uphold independent journalism
Generation Chaff - Phase VI: Centralisation of Information (X, Cheetok/Fentanylware)
Would you trust information when controlled by such people?
Generation Chaff - Phase V: Censorship of Dissent (Painted as Harassment or Terrorism)
Censorship is all around us now
Generation Chaff - Phase IV: Apps Only Few Companies Decide On
Tools are being collectively confiscated, under the premise or false prospect of "security"
Generation Chaff - Phase III: Slop and Plagiarism
A lot of the current so-called 'economy' is built upon false valuations
Generation Chaff - Phase II: "Cloud", Blockchains and Other Hype
For those of us who turned down those propositions there was a struggle; we needed to justify not having skinnerboxes or "social" accounts in some site run by a private company
Generation Chaff - Phase I: Social Control Media
IRC predates the Web
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 23, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 23, 2025
More Clues Shed on Collapse of Microsoft XBox
XBox is basically circling down the drain as Microsoft implements 2-3 waves of layoffs each month
'Vibe Coding' Doesn't Work
In a lot of ways, so-called 'Vibe Coding' is already considered vapourware or a passing fad promoted in the media by managers who try to justify mass layoffs, especially ridding companies of "very expensive" software engineers
Links 24/10/2025: Microsoft's Killing of XBox Connected to Revenue/Profit Problems, "How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/10/2025: 86,400 Seconds and "Society's Task"
Links for the day