Summary: Scarce presence of Novell's SUSE and Xandros in the news

SUSE (SLES/SLED)

THERE was next to no coverage of SLE*, almost none at all. Here is Novell reminding people that it will push SLE 11 at the Linux conference where there will be a SUSE Workshop.

Novell is also hosting the SUSE Workshop at the event, which will teach attendees how to increase agility with SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, the operating system platform for the next-generation data center, and openSUSE, the community distribution that serves as the foundation for SUSE Linux Enterprise.

Speaking of the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon, here is a good new audiocast about it. And there is also the following about Moblin, which was passed as a token to the Linux Foundation. Watch how Novell sucks up to Intel in the following new video.



OES2 has a new beta and Novell's PR department publishes several promotional bits on SLE*, none of which is really new.

At Dell, SLES still comes as an option.

The various editions of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 come pre-installed at the factory (including the forthcoming R2 update to Windows Server 2008) on any of these three boxes, and do does Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5.3 and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11. If you really want Windows Essential Business Server 2008, you have to pay Dell to put it on the box. You can also plunk Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor onto the machine if you want to go virtual from the get-go.

At Lenovo, SLES is among the supported platforms for virtualisation. Lenovo is very weird when it comes to Red Hat.

Support for virtualisation software from VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat and Novell is built in, including for VMware Hypervisor, VMware vSphereTM 4 and Microsoft Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

That's about it regarding SLE. Very static, evidently.

Xandros

Radio silence from Xandros this week, but Presto was mentioned in this overview of Instant-On operating systems.

Presto Chango

One option is Presto, a version of Xandros Linux. Presto should work with most systems (we got it working easily both on a newly purchased new MSI Wind netbook and a five-year-old Dell Inspiron notebook). As important, it includes drivers for a number of common Wi-Fi chipsets from Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, and Ralink.

When installed, Presto sets up your system to dual-boot with Windows, but it doesn't require partitioning the hard drive to do so. When you run it you'll find a simple desktop interface with connectivity utilities like Firefox for Web browsing, Pidgin for instant messaging, and Skype for VoIP, and you can download a wide range of other applications as well. Presto will import Firefox bookmarks from your Windows profile, as well as let you open and edit Microsoft Office files stored on the system. (The OpenOffice.org suite is included.)

It sure seems like distributions which are entangled with Microsoft arrangements (and patent tax) can't get very far. This is good for GNU/Linux as a whole. ⬆