Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part I: Ballnux Downtime, Presto Instant-on, and Other Xandros News

THERE HAS been no news about SLE* that we could find, but there were a few developments (and problems) for OpenSUSE over the course of the past week. There was also some coverage of public appearances from Xandros. We'll go through them quickly.



OpenSUSE



After a relatively long downtime, Zonker weighed in and eventually confirmed that all services had been fully restored.

The main service affected by the above incident is the downloads service. Novell has also released a live version of OpenSUSE with the latest KDE4, which is available for download.

New KDE Four Live CDs with KDE 4.2.1, KOffice 2.0 Beta 7 and much more are up.


Heise, whose affinity for SUSE is clear to see due to geography, republished the OpenSUSE roadmap.

Stephan Kulow, the OpenSUSE project manager, has proposed a roadmap for the future versions of OpenSUSE. While Ubuntu and Fedora distributions currently aspire to provide a new release every six months, which is loosely pinned to the GNOME development schedule, previously OpenSUSE did not have a have a fixed release schedule. OpenSUSE will now try to ship a new version every eight months as part of their new release cycle.


There was not much in the blogosphere about OpenSUSE, but it was mentioned among 10 GNU/Linux distributions at Device Ace.

It’s very easy to install openSUSE 11.1, then you will have too choose between KDE 3.5.10, KDE 4.1.3, GNOME 2.24.1, Xfce 4.4.3, and 3D desktop using Compiz Fusion or kwin/KDE4 desktop environments. After you customize your categories and sub-categories, then you should try applications like OpenOffice.org 3.0, Wine 1.1.9, NetworkManager 0.7, Firefox 3.0.4, Bittorrent, Pidgin 2.5.1, and Banshee 1.4.1 among many others. openSUSE 11.1 features 3G and Bluetooth support, it’s reliable, free to download, fun and easy to use, and it will help you to get the job done!


Some HOWTOs that we found about OpenSUSE are:

  1. Analyzing boot performance of OpenSuse 11.1 with bootchart


  2. Easy live upgrade from 11.0 to 11.1


  3. All in one Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Program for OpenSuse


There is likely to be lots more material in OpenSUSE Weekly News.

* openSUSE Project Meeting next Wednesday * openSUSE Trademark Guidelines Released * Ken Yap: How to clone a VirtualBox Linux VM to a real machine (v0.9) * 11.2 Roadmap and Fixed Release Cycle for openSUSE * Rupert Horstkötter: OSF Status Report #3


SUSE (SLES/SLED)



It was almost impossible to find anything, but SLES is mentioned in a sentence right here.

Most of those new features are also now available for Linux PCs, Ewing said. Altiris is supporting Novell Inc.'s SUSE and Red Hat Inc.'s Linux distributions, she said.


Novell's GNU/Linux business is also mentioned in a sentence in the British press.

It could be argued that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will suffer more than most in the present bleak economic environment. Shorter cashflow cycles, limited bargaining power, shrinking funds available for IT investment and a lack of internal resources all look to be daunting obstacles.

[...]

Nevertheless, the fees for commercial open-source packages such as those on offer from Red Hat, Novell or Ingres, can often equal the total cost of ownership of propriety software over time.


And again, former Novell employee Matt Asay mentions SUSE (Studio) very briefly in this list of companies.

In this way open source embraces the Web, rather than fighting it, and makes software development and delivery an ongoing process, fitting it to how enterprises actually consume software. Novell's SUSE Linux Studio groks this, enabling ongoing customization of Linux distributions. So does Red Hat's RHEL distribution, which lets customers subscribe to ongoing, updated software. So, too, does Zimbra, which adds to the subscription commercial extensions.


Xandros



There was almost more coverage of Xandros than there was of SUSE. It was mostly to do with Presto, which we wrote about last week. It actually made Slashdot's front page and also appeared in:

i. Exchange alternatives: Pros and cons

CommuniGate Pro (CommuniGate Systems), Kerio MailServer (Kerio Technologies), MDaemon Pro (Alt-N Technologies), MailSite Fusion (MailSite), Scalix Enterprise Edition (Scalix, a Xandros company), and Zimbra Collaboration Suite, Professional Edition (Zimbra, a Yahoo company).


ii. [Feature] CES Roundup: Equipment Makers Play for Survival (2)

Qualcomm Inc of the US is another hot prospect, exhibiting a notebook PC mounting its Snapdragon chipset for mobile equipment (Fig 11). It comes with RedFlag Linux and Xandros OS. The mobile phone network support provided by Snapdragon can be used for communication. CDMA Technologies vice president Mark Frankel of Qualcomm said, "We think this is the first Linux machine in the world capable of communication via the 3G network without any add-ons." It is expected to ship in the second quarter of 2009.


iiii. Bypassing Windows with a Quick Boot

Software called Presto could provide an alternative to waiting. Demonstrated this week at Demo, a tech conference held in Palm Desert, CA, it joins a handful of products that have emerged recently in an effort to get people working on their computers faster. These products, offered by companies including Intel, HP, and DeviceVM, generally allow a person to boot up in less than 30 seconds, and in some cases less than 10.


Presto made it into this list of "Cool New Technologies." It also appeared as a feature or merely mentioned in coverage from Canada where parts of the company are based.

Xandros is based in the U.S. with their development lab in Ottawa. They launched Presto, a software application allowing your computer to boot up in seconds rather than minutes. You don’t open up Windows, yet you still access most functions.


Lastly, to address a separate area of Xandros, a Xandros partner issued this press release about Scalix.

A spokesperson for Sentegrity, the exclusive distributor of all Xandros products and services in Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean, today announced a new client in Ecuador.

The Hilton Hotel Quito Ecuador has standardized their email solution and chose Scalix as their only email and collaboration platform. Sentegrity systems integration partner, Eqtek, provided the hands on implementation and vital guidance to migrate the hotel’s 120 employees to Scalix.


In summary, although GNU/Linux thrives in general, SUSE seems to be slowing down and Xandros is moving to other areas that don't tackle the desktop market in the most direct of ways.

Recent Techrights' Posts

In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
 
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025