07.25.09
Novell News Summary – Part II: SUSE Studio, OES2, Xandros, and Linspire
SUSE (SLES/SLED)
ALMOST NOTHING was said about SLE* in the news, but there were exceptions. For instance, this report from Latin America suggests that SLE* is used there.
Chilean IT firm Linux Latin America expects sales to the retail banking segment to reach some US$5mn-7mn during fiscal year 2010, starting August 1, and aims for its new category as platinum channel for Suse Linux to drive growth, the company’s general manager Carlos Muñoz told BNamericas.
Regarding appliances, Novell has this new video (second episode in a series) and we also found this:
SUSE Studio, now in beta, allows you to build custom versions of our Linux distribution via a slick and easy web interface.
This is good for nerds who want to impress their girlfriends* with portable versions of SLES on a USB stick.
iFolder Appliances made an appearance in some places and so did OES2.
Over the past couple of months, I have been involved with migrating remote NetWare servers to Open Enterprise Server 2 (OES2) Linux. During this time, there are some lessons that have been learned that hopefully this article will be able to help you, the reader, perform your own migrations more smoothly and avoid some of the pitfalls we encountered.
Xandros
An article about fast boot was circulating in IDG Web sites. Xandros was mentioned there too because of Presto.
DeviceVM plans to release the instant search-enabled update to Splashtop to PC makers in August and to end users a month after that.
That will beat Google, which only plans to release the source code and betas of Chrome OS sometime this year.
For now, Splashtop remains atop the instant-on Linux market, whose other entrants include Phoenix Technologies Ltd.’s HyperSpace and Xandros Inc.’s Presto.
Similar coverage came from Information Week:
Much has been made of Chrome OS as a Windows killer, but most instant-on operating systems co-exist with Windows. SplashTop, Phoenix Hyperspace, and Xandros Presto all can access the Windows file system in a dual-boot mode and load Office documents. SplashTop users choose whether to boot into Windows or SplashTop. Dell Latitude ON users have a button to load ON instead of Windows.
Ziff Davis wrote about this also.
In fact, its core fast-boot technology formed the basis of HyperSpace competitor Presto, offered by Xandros.
If you absolutely have to have Linux on your netbook, there are plenty of options out there already, including Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Easy Peasy, Moblin and Xandros. All of these offer a level of features and stability that is far beyond Android.
There is a new distribution for Eee PC users:
ASUS never rolled much needed updates for the EEE PCs that ran their Xandros Linux OS. No upgrades were given to the (poor) users of the EEE 700-series which were forced to use old version of Firefox (v2). Folks at XEPC.org have unveiled version 1.7 of the EEE PC OS that is compatible with EEE 700, 701, 701SD, 900, 900A, 900SD, 901, 904HD, 1000 and S101.
A more peculiar mention compared the Xandros distribution from ASUS to the implementation of its sophisticated new keyboard.
Blogeee.net says, “The version we tested was a pre-production model, and only two tabs out of five available in the interface were working. The interface reminded us of the first Eee PCs–Eee Fun and Eee Tools looked like the features found on Netbooks running Xandros. The shortcuts on the screen launch things like the alarm or the calculator, which also display on any screen connected to the system.
Linspire
It’s true that Linspire — despite being folded into Xandros — is still mentioned sometimes, mostly as an historical reference. From a few days ago:
Running applications on mobile devices is not something new but Apple controls user experience like no other companies before and ironically makes it easier, safer and more reliable than anything before. The closest thing I’ve seen to that was Click and Run (CNR), which was launched back in 2002 by Linspire (ex-Lindows) and now part of Xandros.
In summary, not much progress can be seen among distributions that participate in Microsoft’s Linux racket. █
