Summary: SLES and SLED 11 are coming; more instant-on in the news

SUSE (SLERT/SLES/SLED)

SLERT engineers spoke at a New York City-based event a couple of days ago and the Microsoft-affiliated press wrote about a SLES-Cisco connection.

The Linux camp has a real opportunity here as well, with Red Hat and Novell on board at the starting gate. It will be interesting to see which flavor of Linux gains more traction: SUSE, using the Xen hypervisor, or RHEL, which is moving to the KVM hypervisor in its next release. Red Hat is developing a good enterprise story; I suspect that its recent announcement of an enterprise suite of offerings will give it the edge here.

Ian Bruce wrote about it in Novell's PR blog and The Var Guy, who retains some personal contacts/connections with Novell, wrote about it also.

Alas, you can’t see them in this picture. But Novell and Red Hat will have a seat at Cisco Systems’ table as CEO John Chambers (seated, bottom right) builds out Cisco’s server and unified computing strategy. Here’s the scoop, from The VAR Guy.

This relationship is not exclusive and Microsoft is there too, in the form of Maritz and others.

Speaking of the Var Guy, JupiterMedia reposted an article and published it under the provocative headline "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server-- the Pointless Linux?"

The Var Guy rebuts, but he also says:

Meanwhile, some folks still allege that Novell is nothing more than a propped up company controlled by Microsoft.

Yes, Novell is a flawed company in many respects. Too many legacy products. Too many point products that don’t add up to complete solutions. Too many years moving away from the channel (though that’s starting to change…).

Matt Asay responded to this article too.

Paul Rubens at ServerWatch makes a compelling argument that one Linux is better than many for the purpose of keeping Windows in check, and the clear candidate to take that mantle is Red Hat, not Novell's Suse Linux.

Novell's Ross Chevalier (Canada CTO) says that it's time to talk about SLED and sources suggest that SLE 11 is coming next week.

Novell's much-anticipated SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLES) 11 is looking like being launched on March 24th, CBR has learned.

Sources close to the news confirmed that date for the launch of the latest version, which is expected to put greater emphasis on migration technologies, virtualisation, interoperability, 'green' computing and even desktop Linux...[click continue reading for more on this news story]...

The Var Guy seems to confirm this based on the comments in his post.

After canceling its annual BrainShare event, Novell now plans to hit the road with Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Microsoft. A “data center evolution” tour kicks off March 24 and will visit dozens of cities — reacing hundreds of IT managers and channel partners — across the globe.

Now, for the interesting twist: Hewlett-Packard and Novell will give away one HP Mini-Note 2140 at each tour stop. And yes, the Netbook systems are preinstalled with SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 rather than Windows.

It is no secret that SLED 11 is already in its fourth release candidate, but the press is hardly keeping track.

For everyone who is looking for the next release of the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SLED 11 RC 4 is available here. While I usually prefer CentOS my current contract is to support SLES and SLED.

Novell seems to be rejecting the idea of building SLED for ARM-based sub-notebooks.

A year ago, netbooks were viewed as a good chance for Linux to finally break into the desktop computing mainstream.

That was until Microsoft Corp. belatedly reacted by making Windows XP available at a low cost to netbook makers.

This article was spread onto a lot of IDG-owned Web sites and it was also mentioned in The Inquirer.

NOVELL has said that it will not be producing a version of SUSE Linux for ARM-based Netbooks.

There was some hope that Linux would find a home in the ARM netbook market, particularly as Microsoft is not interested in making Windows XP available. But while some Linux distributions were thinking about a release, Novell has ruled it out.

That's truly a shame because ARM+GNU/Linux seems like a powerful combination which Novell won't bother with. The company does, on the other hand, offer versatility in SUSE Studio, which PC Authority wrote about.

SUSE Studio is an experimental distribution customisation system from Novell, based on its SUSE Linux distribution.

[...]

The new SUSE Studio tool make it easier than ever before for millions of system admins to build their own custom Linux systems, and share them online.

Oracle wants GNU/Linux distributions to be free of charge and this includes SLES.

"Let them [Red Hat] charge for support. That's their bread and butter. Open source software is supposed to be free," he said. He said Novell should also make SUSE Linux Enterprise System available as a free download. Oracle gives away its Oracle Enterprise Linux distribution, a repackaged Red Hat Enterprise Linux, because no other free version of an enterprise system is available, he claimed.

Some say that these words from Oracle were misinterpreted or misrepresent the company's overall stance.

Several days ago we warned that Novell had paid Al Gillen and his fellow shills for a 'study' [1, 2]. It didn't take long for Novell to cite these numbers that it bought from IDC and it even uploaded a video to YouTube in order to brag about it.



It later turned out to be connected with Novell's PR blog, which also links to this second video.

In any event, the timing of the study may be related to the release of SLE 11 and the press release indeed came from Novell. In fact, Novell wrote about it in a couple of places and so did Dennis Byron [1, 2], who is frequently citing or writing about his former employer, IDC.

Some more coverage appeared in :

1. APAC bullish on Linux server, desktop installs



2. IT Organizations Turn to Linux in Economic Downturn



3. Recession buoying desktop Linux, vendor-sponsored survey finds



4. Recession Is Driving Open Source Uptake, Says Novell



5. Linux adoption boosted by downturn



6. Novell finds big promises for open source in 2009



7. Linux at the Tipping Point



8. Global credit crunch driving Linux adoption in Yahoo too)



9. Linux a recession winner, IDC finds



10. Recession victims big on Linux, IDC says



11. Linux use booming in global recession



12. Downturn fuels growing interest in Linux

Xandros

In previous writings about Presto [1, 2] we did not witness anything so spectacular, but the product did receive a lot of coverage and continues to get some. ECT covered it some days ago and Linux Haxor likewise. Even USA Today wrote about it:

The downside to instant-on computing: You can't open applications such as Quicken, Microsoft Word or iTunes. It's the Internet or nothing. "But you can do what most people care about," says Jordan Smith, product manager for Presto, from Canadian software firm Xandros. "Check your e-mail, do instant messaging, make Skype phone calls."

More in LifeHacker and Red Orbit:

a streamlined, stripped-down version of the Xandros distribution of Linux. Hardware manufacturers are doing something similar with embedded Linux chips, like Splashtop, but Presto runs on pretty much any Intel-based system.

 

“But you can do what most people care about," Jordan Smith, product manager for Presto, from Canadian software firm Xandros told USA Today. "Check your e-mail, do instant messaging, make Skype phone calls."

Xandros and SUSE were also mentioned along the way in the 'Microsoft press'.

The first configuration file you need is /etc/named.conf. (Actually, that's the name in Fedora and SUSE; in Debian, MEPIS, Ubuntu and Xandros, the BIND configuration file is called /etc/bind/named.conf.) The named server reads this configuration file when it starts. You already have this file if you installed BIND. Listing 1 shows a /etc/named.conf file from Fedora.

That's about all for the time being, but the next post looks at Novell's non-SUSE components. ⬆