Bonum Certa Men Certa

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part II: Keeping Track of Microsoft-taxed GNU/Linux Distributions

Crossing over from OpenSUSE to SUSE, consider the following newly-published Master’s thesis which studies the relationship between the two.

This is the page for my master thesis at the University of Oslo. The thesis carries the title: Managing Firm-Sponsored Open Source Communities

- A Case Study on Novell and The openSUSE Project




Over at Nat Friedman's site, there's a call for job candidates, specifically for SUSE.

One of my most fun responsibilities at Novell is running the SUSE Incubation Team: a small team of developers focused on innovation, prototyping, and exploratory hacking. Our charter is to come up with disruptive ideas that take Novell's Linux business in exciting new directions.


Here are some new photos of Novell at Linuxtag 2008.

SUSE (SLES/SLED)



Jacqueline Emigh at Beta News is once again covering Novell, typically based on the company's press releases.

Novell is now in beta with a subscription management tool for SuSE Linux Enterprise, aimed at helping users of Novell's Linux operating environment to manage their software updates.

In an interview with BetaNews, Michael Applebaum, a senior product marketing manager, described the new tool as a package proxy system designed to accommodate customers' regulatory compliance requirements and corporate firewall policies during the software update process.


SLES/SLED 10 Service Pack II



We mentioned it last week on a couple of occasions, but we didn't refer to Steven's new review of it (with the exception of individual comments that we challenged).

In Novell's new SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP2, announced yesterday, you'll find only small, but useful, improvements, most of them for better interoperability with Microsoft protocols and formats.


As always, Timothy Prickett Morgan joins the previous week's news a little later, but with a unique and detailed article.

Novell Delivers Service Pack 2 for SUSE Linux



[...]

Commercial Linux distributor Novell got Service Pack 2 for its SUSE Linux variant of the popular open source operating system out the door just before the holiday and just as rival Red Hat launched its own 5.2 release of its Enterprise Linux distribution. Once again, Novell is pushing the envelope, offering more scalability for servers and a more recent update of the Xen hypervisor compared to the RHEL alternative.


SUSE-based MSI Laptop



This little laptop received quite a bit of coverage. Here it is from PC Advisor.

The US edition of Wind will be available in two versions: one running Microsoft's Windows XP and one using Novell's SUSE Linux OS.

A few things set Wind apart from competitors, which is going head to head with the latest version of the Asus Eee PC, including the 1.6GHz Atom microprocessor, a larger 10in screen and a six-cell battery that gives it around six hours of power.


TCMagazine too was quick to make a comparison to Asustek's Eee PC.

With the Wind laptop MSI is preparing quite a bold offensive against the Eee PC but taking on Asus' (cvasi) low-cost offer will not be an easy task. Still, MSI's laptop has sparked a lot of interest and reason is certainly the reasonably low price tag.


The MSI notebook also attracted the attention of Microsoft Jack.

Xandros



The only appearance Xandros made in the past week was tied to that derivative from Asustek (eBox and Eee in this case). It would be interesting if Xandros was unable to flourish for its own products, rather than something that's borrowed and tweaked by distant partners from Asia.

Linspire



Nothing. Nada. Not a press release and barely even a distribution review.

Turbolinux



Not a word in ages.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 86 Out of 200: The Position of Courts on Computer-Generated Lawsuits and Filings From Another Continent (Made by Two Men Who Work for Slop Companies)
Lawsuits by proxy from California
IAM Magazine is in Effect Dead, It's Now Fused Into Microsoft's Patent Troll (Which It Has Promoted All Along)
Microsoft-connected patent trolls in Europe [...] Now, in his new job, Wild can use his 'expertise' to help guide blackmail/extortion to better harm Europe's industry
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 24, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, May 24, 2026
Gemini Links 24/05/2026: Impressions of Auckland, the Age of Left or Right Extremism, and .zim files
Links for the day
Microsoft's 'Hiring Freeze' (Layoffs) and Salary Freeze (While Inflation Approaches Double-Digit Rates)
If they get replaced by anyone, it'll be low-paid folks in low-salary regions [...] workers' stress levels shoot up, compensation goes down
Slop Will Not End Humanity, The Pushers of It Do (Artificial Scarcities and Global Warming)
Causing hunger and poverty in the name of "computation"
How Can the 'Broligarchs' Love Us When They Don't Even Love Themselves?
Their SLAPPs have their limits
Death at IBM Due to Overwork
Dying for IBM is never worth it
We Publish Less, We Get More Exposure
UbuntuPit is coming to realise that quantity isn't what comes to matter or truly "count", especially when quantity comes at expense of authenticity
Codecs and Software Patents - Part IX - GNU Project Has Chosen to Adopt AV1 for Its Videos, Conversion and Additions Underway
One of our readers is working to help GNU through the maze of software patents and maze of patent lawsuits, which aren't the same thing but are somewhat overlapping issues
Links 24/05/2026: SoftBank CEO Getting Conned by Scam Altman, Hotter 2026 and El Nino With Growing Impact
Links for the day
Links 24/05/2026: Ebola Outbreak and "Journalists Identify Murder Victims Of Trump’s Boat Strike Program"
Links for the day
A Huge Proportion of 'Articles' in The Register MS Are Actually Paid Spam of the Communist Party of China, Selling Compromised (for Wiretapping) Technology
The Register MS is having a go at becoming a marketing company or "B2B"
Top Officials Have Just Left Microsoft, Layoffs in Anything But Name
Microsoft's debt is very fast-growing
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) Meets "Alicante Mafia" at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Report on meeting with VP1 and his team on 21 April 2026
UbuntuPit (ubuntupit.com) Has Deleted Slop Pages, Its Slopfarm Experiment Has Failed (Like Always!)
Turning one's site into a slopfarm is a death knell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 23, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, May 23, 2026
The "Next Big" Bonus for IBM's CEO Apparently Comes From American Taxpayers While Veteran IBMers Are PIP'd and RA'd (Laid Off)
the next big thing will be the CEO's bonus
Links 23/05/2026: Starbucks Scraps Disastrous Slopfest, Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Poetry, Hobbies, ROOPHLOCH, and More
Links for the day
Government Bailouts Won't be Enough to Save IBM
Bailouts from taxpayers in the US
Links 23/05/2026: Social Media Bans and Demise of Userbase of LLM Chatbots
Links for the day
Legal Letters Are Not Postcards
It seems like intimidation, nothing more
SLAPP Censorship - Part 85 Out of 200: The United Kingdom's Rating for Press Freedom Has Improved, But We Can Do Even Better
we see the US at #64
Sites Realise That Becoming More Active by Using Bots (LLM Slop) is Self-Destructive
We'll soon (maybe next year) also show that some of the 85+ KG of legal papers sent our way are computer-generated garbage, which might run afoul of some rules
European Patent Office (EPO) Strikes Persist, EPO Management Tries to Give False Impression of "Happy Staff"
EPO is trying to broadcast to the world a totally phony image of itself
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Patience, LLM Chatbts Being Bad, and Unexpected Computer Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 22, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 22, 2026