07.05.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, KDE, Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, Scalix, Servers, SLES/SLED, Xandros at 5:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another Novell employee moves to Red Hat and Novell continues to focus on initiatives that make Microsoft stronger
Novell has not been particularly healthy to SUSE’s reputation, especially after it signed that patent/collaboration deal with Microsoft. Jakub Steiner left Novell last month and he is joining Red Hat, which also scooped up Novell’s director of ISV ecosystems last month.
Today was my first day at Red Hat.
As SUSE people move to Red Hat, Novell is left with Mono and Moonlight. Its developers keep developing such Microsoft enablers and there is little news apart from that. To Novell, OpenSUSE is just a volunteers magnet from which to produce SLES/SLED, which Microsoft makes money from. Novell helps Microsoft in HPC using SUSE as a ramp (Microsoft finds other routes) and Microsoft also profits from Xandros, by imposing its patent tax on Scalix which was last mentioned in this press release.
Scalix, the award-winning Linux email, group calendaring, and messaging subsidiary of Xandros, Inc., today announced that Ecommerce, Inc., a world leader in web hosting solutions (IX Web Hosting), has chosen Scalix as the premium groupware of choice for their customer base.
There is nothing else in the news about Xandros and very little about Novell, except the OpenSUSE 11.3 release which Stephan Kulow writes about ahead of parties in places like Nürnberg (not much anywhere else). The RC of OpenSUSE 11.3 is now out:
Two weeks after the first release candidate arrived, the openSUSE development team have issued the second and final release candidate (RC) for version 11.3 of the openSUSE operating system. According to the developers, the latest development preview is a “final check” aimed at making sure that “11.3 is polished and in good condition”.
To OpenSUSE’s credit, it gives a fair deal to KDE [1, 2]. With Mandriva having difficulties (Red Hat hired some of its developers), OpenSUSE remains essential to cutting-edge KDE.
wstephenson announced on the opensuse-kde@ mailinglist that openSUSE 11.3 will ship KDE SC 4.4.4, so you want might to test those packages.
OpenSUSE ought to distance itself from Novell/Microsoft, but this requires a name change because the “OpenSUSE” trademark is owned by Novell. █
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07.03.10
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, SLES/SLED, Xandros at 2:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “Xandros hasn’t released a new version of Xandros Server since May 2007. That’s over three years,” argues a blogger
IT WAS almost exactly 2 years ago (prior to Independence Day) that Linspire threw itself at Xandros’ arms, only to see everything from Linspire dusted away into a nearby ashtray. Both Xandros and Linspire had signed patent deals with Microsoft and shown the world what happens to those who sidle with the convicted monopolist.
“Stick a fork in Xandros,” writes one blogger today, “it’s done.”
Xandros hasn’t released a new version of Xandros Desktop since November 2006 when they released Xandros 4.1. That’s almost four years without a new OS.
Xandros hasn’t released a new version of Xandros Server since May 2007. That’s over three years.
Xandros’ Presto OS pretty much came into the market with a whimper and went out with a sigh – most likely in the span of one month.
DistroWatch has declared Xandros Desktop to be a discontinued distribution.
Many former Xandrosians – myself included – have moved on to other OSes such as Ubuntu, Mint, and PCLinuxOS. Most abandoned Xandros when they sold out to Microsoft’s racketeering scam (the “patent agreement”). (I should note that I abandoned Xandros upon release of Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake LTS.)
SUSE suffered from Novell’s deal with Microsoft as well. Listen to this new episode of Linux Basement. About 15 minutes from the start they begin explaining why they left SUSE (as did yours truly). OpenSUSE needs to distance itself from Novell, otherwise it will continue to scare existing and prospective users.
At the moment, Novell blurs the gap between SUSE (in the SLE* sense) and OpenSUSE. It is selling SUSE appliances and advertises them massively in its PR blog. Just looking at the past week alone we found three examples [1, 2, 3], one of which focuses on the mainframe:
As employee number 135 at SUSE (bought by Novell in 2004), Joerg Eberwein has seen it all. With a small team of engineers and partners—numbering around 10 in the early days—they were able to rely on innovation, teamwork and each other to create a product that has been around a decade.
[...]
“We saw the chance and we took it,” said Eberwein. “We started to spread the message of Linux on the mainframe.”
Novell does not grant the user much control. In fact, it is moving control away from the user [1, 2] while at the same time spreading FUD about SaaS, e.g. when losing a contract in Los Angeles.
With NetWare SMB ‘AccountName’ flaws and BSM failure, Novell is headed nowhere, just like Xandros. Last week it advertised [1, 2] its recently-acquired BSM assets (buyout one year ago) but this BSM’s CEO quit Novell last year. It doesn’t look particularly good for any of Novell’s business areas. Even the marketing people (after some major departures) can’t get their grammar right:
Within the Novell BSM solution we speak in terms of the Configuration Management System (CMS) accessing data at it’s source as data in memory (or federated in real-time) because the value is joining the data metrics in a model providing the relationships that illustrate “value” through the creation of “information”.
Novell — like Linspire — might be sold for some of its assets to be buried and others to be sold away cheaply (those that have positive market value). The boycott against Novell has fulfilled itself almost entirely. Meanwhile we saw massive companies like Nokia and Google leveraging GNU/Linux and bringing it further into the mainstream. █
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05.25.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, Mandriva, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Xandros at 2:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Mandriva gets rid of Beagle in the 2010.1 (Spring) release
SOME moments ago, as the log at the bottom shows, we found out that Mandriva had removed Beagle from the latest version of its GNU/Linux distribution (one of my favourite distributions). This is encouraging news which comes right after Ubuntu's removal of F-Spot and Fedora’s removal of Mono as a whole. Two years ago we warned Mandriva that it had created an unnecessary Mono dependency in OpenOffice.org and Mandriva responded by fixing it.
“This is encouraging news which comes right after Ubuntu’s removal of F-Spot and Fedora’s removal of Mono as a whole.”Mono dependents are fine, but probably not in a default installation of a GNU/Linux distribution.
The good news is that, as time goes by, GNU/Linux is advancing in many areas and vendors that sold out to Microsoft (decided to pay Microsoft for Linux, unlike Mandriva) are going extinct. Novell will probably be sold shortly and Xandros (which includes Linspire) is hardly ever mentioned in the news anymore. Presto is mentioned here and Xandros is mentioned here, but it’s more of an historical mention. █
| DaemonFC |
schestowitz: Mandriva is moving away from Mono a bit |
May 25 07:43 |
| schestowitz |
How so? |
May 25 07:44 |
| DaemonFC |
2010.1 will replace Beagle with Tracker |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
Nice |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
Good proof? |
May 25 07:44 |
| DaemonFC |
yes |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
Page/screenshot? |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
Just in case |
May 25 07:44 |
| DaemonFC |
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2010.1_RC |
May 25 07:44 |
| Techrights |
Title: 2010.1 RC – Mandriva Community Wiki .::. Size~: 61.51 KB |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
I want to verify to avoid mikstakes |
May 25 07:44 |
| DaemonFC |
Tracker is now replacing Beagle as document search engine. |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
DaemonFC: thanks |
May 25 07:44 |
| schestowitz |
what mono is left in it then? |
May 25 07:44 |
| DaemonFC |
the runtime itself and F-Spot I believe |
May 25 07:45 |
| schestowitz |
no tomboy/gnote? |
May 25 07:45 |
| DaemonFC |
oh, forgot about that |
May 25 07:46 |
| DaemonFC |
doesn’t say anything about getting rid of Tomboy, 2010 had it |
May 25 07:46 |
| DaemonFC |
Beagle uses a hell of a lot of resources though |
May 25 07:46 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[nsisodiya] Now searching for a girl assistant for various task at my company. btw operation was successful and I am OK. |
May 25 07:47 |
| DaemonFC |
it’s not uncommon for it to sit there and take 80 MB of RAM just for itself while indexing |
May 25 07:47 |
| DaemonFC |
Tracker usually takes more like 30 |
May 25 07:47 |
| DaemonFC |
those little mono applets here and there gang up on you, take up way more resources than they’re worth |
May 25 07:48 |
| DaemonFC |
Tomboy takes about double the memory of Gnote |
May 25 07:48 |
| schestowitz |
Recoll took gigabytes |
May 25 07:49 |
| schestowitz |
The index |
May 25 07:49 |
| schestowitz |
Not the program |
May 25 07:49 |
| schestowitz |
For my home dir |
May 25 07:49 |
| DaemonFC |
I have to wonder what the hell these distributions are thinking when they needlessly pile these things on |
May 25 07:49 |
| DaemonFC |
makes it useless on older PCs with less than 1 GB of RAM |
May 25 07:49 |
| DaemonFC |
and while there are equivalent programs that use half the memory all over the place |
May 25 07:50 |
| DaemonFC |
Beagle is like WinFS for Linux |
May 25 07:53 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[zoobab] With multiple patents, stronger patent rights can have the perverse effect of stifling, not encouraging, innovation http://ur1.ca/038r1 |
May 25 07:55 |
| Techrights |
Title: Fast forward >> – The H Open Source: News and Features .::. Size~: 37.78 KB |
May 25 07:55 |
| DaemonFC |
hmmm, Indiana University isn’t mirroring the RC |
May 25 07:56 |
| DaemonFC |
nor is Purdue |
May 25 07:56 |
| DaemonFC |
those have always been the fastest mirrors for me  |
May 25 07:57 |
| *Diablo-D3 (~diablo@pool-64-222-232-11.port.east.myfairpoint.net) has joined #boycottnovell |
May 25 07:57 |
| MinceR |
beagle isn’t like winfs for linux. beagle actually exists. |
May 25 07:57 |
| DaemonFC |
MinceR: part of WinFS ended up in Windows 7 |
May 25 07:57 |
| DaemonFC |
as “libraries” |
May 25 07:57 |
| DaemonFC |
more irritating than helpful |
May 25 07:58 |
| MinceR |
that describes m$ products in general |
May 25 07:58 |
| DaemonFC |
“You can’t save here you idiot!” |
May 25 07:58 |
| DaemonFC |
 |
May 25 07:58 |
| -BNtwitter/#boycottnovell-[zoobab] Absolute power has corrupted the MPEG-LA absolutely http://ur1.ca/031fu |
May 25 07:59 |
| Techrights |
Title: Nero Files Antitrust Case Against MPEG-LA .::. Size~: 30.37 KB |
May 25 07:59 |
| DaemonFC |
so they end up making you scroll through C:\Users\<user name>\My Music for example |
May 25 07:59 |
| DaemonFC |
you can’t just click Music and Save |
May 25 07:59 |
| DaemonFC |
so I redid it all so that the actual folders are in my favorites |
May 25 07:59 |
| schestowitz |
Let me see, hold on…. |
May 25 08:00 |
| DaemonFC |
and it ends up “My Documents” “My Music” My Pictures” etc. on top of “Music” “Documents” “Pictures” |
May 25 08:00 |
| DaemonFC |
still aggravating and no way to turn it off |
May 25 08:00 |
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05.22.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows, Xandros at 5:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: It’s “better with Windows” and “ASUS recommends Windows 7″ when Microsoft pays for such text to be shown, but the reality is very different
IN an overly dramatic new headline, SJVN asks, “Has ASUS abandoned netbook Linux?”
The answer is no because ASUS is back to Linux, sometimes in the form of Android. We gave several examples in recent months. Regarding abandonment of Xandros for sub-notebooks, the following posts show Microsoft’s role in it.
To SJVN’s credit, he does mention Microsoft’s role but he also writes:
I’m sure that the real reason is Microsoft has pressured Asus into abandoning Linux. On ASUS’ site, you’ll now see the slogan “ASUS recommends Windows 7″ proudly shown.
ASUS is being paid to put that text in there. It doesn’t mean that it’s sincere. It is a fake endorsement which Microsoft pays many OEMs for.
In summary, Microsoft escaped antitrust fines for its misconduct in sub-notebooks, but it is losing the bigger race anyway, especially now that Linux replaces Vista 7 on the Slate [1, 2] and Courier dies [1, 2] due to intense competition. Almost every electronic reader is powered by Linux. When Microsoft thought it scored well in a single round (by cheating) it saw its profit sinking at alarming rates and the future looks bright for GNU/Linux. █
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05.12.10
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Search, Xandros at 7:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The software squid on the face of the Earth expands its perimeter of negative influence and subjugation
LAST week we wrote about belittling of Google, courtesy of a highly paid de facto Microsoft ‘insider’, groomed to replace Yang (currently mentioned in this new article) and wed with Ballmer. It turns out that a lot of other sources covered this too and mocked her for hypocrisy, with the exception of Microsoft partners like Ziff Davis and MSBBC [1, 2]:
Microsoft bloggers are raving about Microsoft’s use of Yahoo! as a de facto subsidiary [1, 2, 3] (the only other example of coverage comes from WebProNews), which is either hilarious or sickening. It probably depends on one’s mood. What Microsoft did to Yahoo! ought to teach everyone in the industry why Microsoft staff is corporate poison and why Microsoft is a bully without boundaries. It should be treated like a dangerous cult, which is exactly what a government delegate compared this company to.
Joe Wilcox, a former Microsoft watcher, says that “Microsoft cannibalizes Yahoo search share”
Microsoft sure is gaining search share fast. Too bad it’s cannibalizing Yahoo rather than gaining on Google.
Microsoft merely arranged the passing of traffic from Yahoo! to Microsoft. The tragic thing here is that a search option has been removed by Microsoft. Anyone who wishes to avoid Google might as well be stuck with Microsoft. This is another fine example of how Microsoft ruins the market, kills products, harms innovation, and puts people out of work.
Indeed, according to other articles too [1, 2], the only firm which gauges US search market share and is not receiving payments from Microsoft* says that Bong [sic] lost market share in April, despite losing (‘investing’) billions of dollars per year by paying companies to drop Google [1, 2]. It couldn’t get much worse for Microsoft. Or maybe it could [1, 2].
Anyway, as Search Engine Journal points out, Microsoft also uses its search/advertising business to exclude competition in the Web browsers and operating systems space:
Here are some things I’ve seen change and LOVE:
* AdCenter Desktop Editor – My only qualm here is that this is only for PC (come ON Microsoft, stop it, we are computer users too, and no this is not making me want to buy a PC).
[...]
* Support Your Competitors Products – They aren’t your competitors when it comes to your advertising. Get over it, k?
o Mac Support for Excel Plugin and Desktop Editor (while you’re at it can you tell the Excel people to make Excel Mac like Excel PC? Thanx.)
o Google Chrome Support (it works, but can we remove the warning?)
Typical.
Now that Yahoo! is hijacked by Microsoft, we are not surprised to see Microsoft’s bedfellow Samsung putting Yahoo! on Linux phones to not only make money for Microsoft (patent racket) but send users to Microsoft’s datacentres too.
Yahoo and Samsung are expanding their partnership so that mobile services such as Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Search will be preloaded on Samsung phones running the proprietary Bada and Google Android operating systems.
We will say more about what Microsoft is doing to Linux/Android phones in the next post. Samsung makes it a Ballnux and just like Xandros, it is paying Microsoft for Android. Those new Samsung phones are therefore not a victory and the same goes for LG’s new Android-powered phones, which are ‘taxed’ by Microsoft. How about HTC, which also became a victim?
Two Android ROMs crammed onto HTC Hero
If you’d like to give it a go, you’ll need at least some knowledge of the rooting process, and a computer running a flavour of Linux. Be aware also that the process takes some time to complete – around 15 minutes to “dualize” the handset, and slow boot-ups the first few times that you start your dual-booting handset.
HTC is also paying Microsoft for Android. HTC is based in Taiwan, whereas LG and Samsung are based on Korea. They all pay Microsoft for Android and we can’t quite see the Taiwanese government stepping in to stop this abuse because Microsoft has just become a partner of the government there (smells like corruption).
The Taiwan branch of U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. showcased cloud computing applications created by local companies on Microsoft platforms, at a summit Tuesday in Taipei, with the aim of forging closer partnerships in a country known for its technology strength.
Why on Earth is the government assisting the very same company that it found guilty of breaking the law (about twice last year and even before that)? This ‘news’ from MSN (we knew about it months ago) makes no sense and it takes us back to yesterday’s news about what Microsoft does in Panama and some other countries whose sovereignty it takes away. Governments should by all means avoid everything that's classified as 'cloud' that's managed by another party.
“Governments should by all means avoid everything that’s classified as ‘cloud’ that’s managed by another party.”Microsoft’s relationship with Taiwan’s government is all about taking people’s data using the so-called ‘cloud’ which it makes a lot of noise about [1, 2, 3, 4] because it’s viewed as an opportunity for further lock-in, with both proprietary software and users’ loss of data possession. They are using buzz terms like “private cloud” to insinuate that the user has privacy or ownership. If it’s proprietary, however, then it’s not private, it’s rented. Free software is required for privacy in a so-called "private cloud".
Watch how Microsoft is painting everything as “cloud”, even Exchange. In the same way, Microsoft is painting everything that's Windows with the "seven" brush these days. It’s all just branding and marketing.
Here is a former Microsoft intern who says that “UC Davis scraps Gmail pilot: Privacy levels ‘unacceptable’” (not that Live@Edu is any better).
E-mail should only belong to or be seen by routers and maybe ISPs, not so-called ‘cloud’ providers. Nobody needs to have a mail account on a service whose storage capacity costs just a cent and a half and is given in exchange for spying and advertising. Hotmail is just as bad as Gmail, but the former Microsoft intern from ZDNet is more concerned about Google (where the FUD is better placed). Microsoft’s booster Ina Fried (from a sister Web site of ZDNet) has a new Microsoft boosting piece which shows how Microsoft was changing Hotmail (along with screenshots), but it’s important to remember that Microsoft ruined Hotmail ever since it took over, turning it from a leader into a follower that causes problems to the Internet as a whole. Microsoft also turned Hotmail into a spying trap, just like Google. These boosters/employees of Microsoft are being hypocrites and they know it. █
____
* Two of the other meters, namely comScore and Nielsen, receive money from Microsoft and they all just measure something in the United States, with perhaps one exception (that’s rarely cited by the English-speaking press).
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05.06.10
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Patents, Red Hat, Xandros at 8:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: In the aftermath of the Acacia case it is important to point out that SUSE is still encumbered with unjustified patent tax (Microsoft’s racket)
COVERAGE of the Acacia case can be found in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and there is decent coverage from Joab Jackson (also in [1, 2, 3, 4]). We covered the ending of this case in the following posts, so we won’t repeat the same old arguments and analysis.
What we found interesting is that Acacia issued a press release just to announced that it had lost the case.
The jury determined that the patents were invalid and not infringed.
There will not be an appeal.
So, what does that tell us about Red Hat and Novell? Most of the press (see [1]-[3] from the news below) deals with those two companies as peers, but this apparent parity neglects to say that Red Hat remains free, whereas Novell just won’t pay more patent tax in addition to Microsoft’s. This is why we insist on using a label like “Ballnux”, to clearly indicate that a particular distribution of Linux comes with patent tax which is paid to Steve Ballmer and fellow extortionists. Not all distributions of Linux are created equal. Companies or home users in need of a good server should choose Debian, Red Hat, Red Hat clones, or just about anything but SUSE and Xandros. █
____
[1] Aberdeen Releases New Research Into Mainframe Technology: Complexity, Sustainability, and Talent
The Aberdeen Group Mainframe Technology Toolkit is made available due in part to the support of Novell.
[2] Cray mimics Ethernet atop SeaStar interconnect
Supercomputer maker Cray doesn’t talk much about the systems software that runs on its massively parallel, midrange, or entry HPC gear, but it probably will start doing so more because of the work it has done to make its non-standard XT boxes look a little less proprietary as far as Linux applications are concerned.
[3] SGI Announces Next-Generation Altix(R) ICE Scale-out Supercomputer
Altix ICE 8400, with its innovative blade design, easily and affordably scales to up to 65,536 compute nodes with integrated single or dual plane InfiniBand backplane interconnect. Open x86 architecture makes it equally simple to deploy commercial, open source or custom applications on completely unmodified Novell(R) SUSE(R) or Red Hat(R) Linux(R) operating systems.
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04.24.10
Posted in IBM, LG, Linspire, Novell, Samsung, SLES/SLED, Xandros at 11:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: IBM and Novell grow a little closer; Verizon and SpagoBI make use of SUSE as well; other Ballnux distributions have little to say
SUSE (SLES/SLED)
MOST of the SUSE news this week relates to IBM and/or Studio, starting with this article about IBM’s Power7.
Read the rest of this entry »
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04.21.10
Posted in Corel, Deals, Debian, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Scalix, Xandros at 4:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “It should be widely known by now. No matter why, when and where, join MS and you will be dead.” –Abe
Richard Hillesley has just published “The lost world of the Xandros desktop,” which is an article that looks at Xandros’ past and present. To quote some bits from this long article:
The latest release of the Xandros Linux desktop edition was in June 2006, which is several lifetimes in the history of Linux. Is this the end of the line for the Xandros desktop?
[...]
The ‘patent covenant’ with Microsoft has had a detrimental effect on Xandros’ ongoing relationships with the Linux user and developer communities. Ostensibly the purpose of the deal with Microsoft was to license protocols to enable Xandros’ BridgeWays and Scalix products to work with Microsoft networks.
Actually, Scalix came later. Xandros bought Scalix in July 2007 (July 9th to be precise), whereas Xandros sold out to Microsoft on June 4th.
We have found some new comments on the subject, including one in Tux Machines:
Xandros propaganda for smartphones ? giving up on netbooks ?
Netbooks were born for children. But had a future for enterprise applications because of HDTV(broadcasting news or training film) 16:9 video format(DVD player format). So, Asus sold more XP(sp3). But for individuals, dual boot with Ubuntu maybe a choice, until Firefox shot itself in the foot(not flash9 compatible).
In the comment titled “Join MS”, Abe from Linux Today writes:
Those who forget history are bound to repeat it.
It should be widely known by now. No matter why, when and where, join MS and you will be dead.
Those who ignore the warnings can’t blame but themselves.
We have a detailed list of companies that lost their GNU/Linux focus after signing Microsoft deals. Xandros of one of those companies. It’s "Microsoft's touch of death". █
“I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense — I deserve it.”
–Be’s CEO Jean-Louis Gassée
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