06.20.09
Novell News Summary – Part II: A Lot About SLES, Little About Scalix and Xandros
Summary: Assorted news about GNU/Linux that funds Microsoft
SLES
There are many articles which mention SUSE, but none that are actually about SUSE, with only a few exceptions. The following is a press release about SLES on System z.
Centrify Corporation, the leading provider of Microsoft Active Directory-based, identity and access management and auditing solutions for non-Microsoft platforms, today announced the availability of Centrify Suite 2008 for Linux on IBM System z. The first Linux supported as a guest OS is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z. With Centrify Suite, enterprises can easily secure the hundreds to thousands of Linux servers that a single mainframe can host by leveraging their existing Active Directory infrastructure and user accounts. The Centrify Suite also allows IT administrators to integrate all other Linux, UNIX and Mac systems in an enterprise within Active Directory to provide centralized identity management, access control, privilege management and auditing of all non-Windows platforms.
It’s also here and in this sloppy/lazy rewrite of the press release.
Centrify says it also specializes in providing Microsoft (News – Alert) Active Directory-based, and identity, access management and auditing solutions for non-Microsoft platforms, and claims that Novell’s (the developer of SUSE Linux) response was positive about this latest application development. “Novell (News – Alert) is pleased that Centrify Suite is now certified on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z,” said Kevin M. Pereau, Director, Independent Software Vendor Ecosystems at Novell. “In today’s economy, customers are looking for freedom of choice and lower total cost of ownership and by certifying Centrify Suite on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z, Centrify is offering its customers both.”
Another article about IBM servers (Blades) mentions SLES somewhere among the lines:
(IBM ran the test with Novell’s SUSE Linux, but priced it with AIX, which is a bit of a no-no.) The JS43 was rated at 219 on the test, almost precisely twice the performance as the JS23 (as you would expect considering it is just two JS23s snapped together), and cost a little more than twice as much at $23,756 for a configuration with one disk and 64 GB of memory, or just over $108 per unit of performance.
Novell’s PR people spoke about Fog Computing, which they are trying to saturate with SLES.
With Novell’s position in core infrastructure, Novell intends to play a major role in cloud computing. Several technology choices for the cloud are favorable to Novell— Linux is the favored operating system used by cloud providers; XEN—which we have discussed often— is the favored virtualization technique. Moreover, Novell’s strength in technology areas such as management and security is relevant.
From Fog Computing we move on to “Liquid Computing” — an article which happens to mention Novell as a partner.
Liquid Computing, which formed in 2003, has built up an ecosystem of partners around its technology. For example, LiquidIQ supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008, the Hyper-V hypervisor and Microsoft System Center management capabilities. Other partners include VMware, Oracle, NetApp and Novell, for enterprise Linux support.
Manufacturing Computer Solutions wrote about Novell’s latest love fest with Microsoft and so did VNUNet and Heise. We wrote about this some days ago.
Joe the Var Guy neglects to see Novell's problems, so instead he writes about Novell in a very positive tone, concentrating on just a tiny portion of the company’s overall business.
Of course, The VAR Guy has graciously danced around some conspiracy theories suggesting the Microsoft-Novell relationship represents the bulk of Novell’s Linux sales growth. At this point, The VAR Guy doesn’t believe the alleged conspiracy… SUSE Linux is selling because customers want it, not because Microsoft is buying it.
First of all, it’s not a “conspiracy”, it is a fact. And Novell’s Linux numbers are fudged, by its own admission. Blind trust is not a quality.
The above is not correct. Novell signed no major deals recently (again, by its own admission) and the one bragging about SUSE vouchers is Microsoft, not Novell. Microsoft wants to flood the GNU/Linux market with patent royalties covering imaginary things.
Novell’s SLES was also mentioned in the following:
i. Dell grows Intel ‘Nehalem EP’ iron
The PowerEdge R410 can have Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 as well as Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2 and Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5.2 installed at the Dell factory. SLES 11, RHEL 4.7 and 5.3, and Windows Server 2003 are not pre-installed, but can be bought with the box. HPC customers can get Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 or RHEL 5 for HPC preinstalled if they are building clusters.
ii. Citrix XenServer 5.5 released
Citrix has released version 5.5 of its XenServer virtualisation software. New features in this release include the optional ability to connect to Microsoft’s Active Directory and the support of new host systems, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.3, Debian “Lenny” 5.0 and Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 (SLES).
No appearances of SLED or SLERT this week, so on we move to Xandros.
Xandros
Scalix, which is now part of Xandros, issued this press release about ActiveSync support.
Scalix ActiveSync 1.0 provides push email as well as wireless calendar and contact synchronization. It supports a huge variety of mobile devices supporting the ActiveSync industry standard including Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft Windows Mobile-based devices, and Symbian-based phones, such as Nokia’s E- and N-Series.
This can also be found here with more details in Heise and in Ziff Davis/eWeek.
The add-on for Scalix Server is implemented as a Java-based Web application and no additional software is required for mobile devices that already support ActiveSync.
Xandros-owned email and groupware vendor Scalix released Scalix ActiveSync 1.0, a push email and synchronization add-on to Scalix Server that implements Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync protocol for wireless message synchronization. Scalix also released Scalix Server 11.4.4, touted for its over 200 improvements.
Heise mentioned Xandros also in the context of Moblin/sub-notebooks and so did ZDNet.
Each zone displays a running application. The Moblin user interface is impressive and unlike any desktop Linux environment, but it does maintain a good level of compatibility, hence the range of Moblin editions announced by Canonical, Xandros, Novell and others.
PC makers also put their own stamp on this with interfaces such as HP’s Mi (Mobile Internet) on its Mini netbooks. At Computex, I even saw a 10-inch smartbook from Pegatron, a contract manufacturer, with a Freescale ARM chip running Xandros Linux with a Windows XP “look-a-like” user interface.
This new page explains how to recover Xandros (on Eee PC) and this one provides a set of tips for it.
Using the “custom” partition choice at the beginning of Xandros, make the two partitions, the 1st (for XP)- as FAT32 & the second as ReiserFS for Xandros.
All in all, it has been quiet week for vendors that signed patent deals with Microsoft. █
