06.20.09
Novell News Summary – Part I: Some OpenSUSE 11.1 Reviews, Fedora Gratitude
Summary: Project news for OpenSUSE
Federico’s departure from the board is something that we covered about a week ago and Linux Journal covered it as well. OpenSUSE did a little article about Lars Müller, SUSEGeek/SUSEUser took a look at some OpenSUSE software and so did others.
openSUSE Day was marked in Chile.
We are hoping to have students, young people, professors, teachers, and professionals from many fields as well. Actually everyone is welcome to attend the event. We’ll have presentations, stands, gaming, and of course the fun install fest (openSUSE 11.1). And yes, you can have an original openSUSE 11.1 Live DVD if you are one of the first 400 people to get there
(Thanks Zonker!).
There was also some OpenSUSE activity in India and there will be more at South East Linux Fest.
We have demonstrated openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e(Linux For Education) OS at many stores/malls here in Baroda (India), the store managers were very thrilled to see this new technology. Gujarat State Education Board (GSEB) has introduced Linux and Open Source in curriculum from this year, session starts Monday 15 June 2009. Kerala and Tamil Nadu States are already using linux for few years now. Apart from schools and government offices running Linux, most IT colleges have Linux in their course too.
Moving on to some interesting stuff, here is a good review of the latest OpenSUSE.
Welcome to openSUSE 11.1. What I’m reviewing right now is the Gnome version of openSUSE 11.1, which i think have a good and tight integration with openSUSE as a system. The YAST is integrated with Gnome well, and the install software feature is actually well connected and slicker than before.
Another quick review:
There was nothing really wrong with openSuse 11.1, but on the other hand it didn’t convince me either. It felt a bit like a throwback to the Linux of a couple of years ago, where everything would eventually work if you tried long enough. Except, it’s not aimed at those kind of users who like to tinker with their PCs until sunset. It’s meant to be an easy, complete desktop system, and as such, in my opinion it fails. For users looking for that kind of operating system I’d recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
One of our contributors, _Hitcham_, has just tried the current build of OpenSUSE 11.2 and likes what he sees (more about that milestone is due next week). He is building and testing mononono using the Build Service. And speaking of which, here is some news about OpenSUSE Factory:
openSUSE development is now even more open than before. Factory development is changing, and we’re making it easier for contributors to take responsibility for packages and to contribute directly to openSUSE. This means contributors will be able to be directly responsible for packages, without having to go through a Novell employee to make changes.
A person whom we suspect is a regular from Tux Machines seems to have written about Novell’s excursions over the years and where they stand with OpenSUSE.
What seems to be a very long time ago, I was a young, handsome college student working towards a degree in computer science in network technology.
OK, I was a young college student, let’s leave it at that.
The de facto network Operating System that was all the craze way back in 1995 and 1996 was Novell NetWare.
Yes, it was technically referred to as a NOS, Network Operating System.
Microsoft was still in diapers just getting Windows 3 to 3.1 and 3.11 out. Before Windows, it was Microsoft DOS or Disk Operating System. Windows was just a program you installed over DOS back then. The point is, DOS and Windows, later known as Windows alone, were PC operating systems, meant to stand alone.
[...]
If I could make one suggestion to Novell though.
Pull an Ubuntu. Make OpenSuse the one and only distro. Make it the best you can make it. Then build your support and services around that. If people want to use it on their own, let them. if they want official ‘backup’ they can come to you.
Some more comments can be found here and in other news, Fedora thanks OpenSUSE, which is heartwarming to see. Paul Frields writes:
Recently I had another reminder of how cool it is to work in free software — while working on my PulseCaster project, I was in serious need of some Python bindings for PulseAudio.
[...]
So thanks, openSUSE, for the DeltaRPM goodness. We are making good use of it here in Fedora too, and we appreciate your contribution to our distribution — our users just know they’re having a better experience, and we’re happy to share that love too.
OpenSUSE’s Web site may contain many more items of news, but the site may be down sporadically.
We do a number of software and hardware updates this week for our openSUSE servers. That means that some services will not be available for some time.
Build Service is down at the time of writing. Why no redundancy? This is a recurring issue and OpenSUSE looks for sponsors for this reason. █
