Summary: Rave about Linux Mint 10, which is a recommended option to existing Ubuntu users

Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu. Android, Android, Android. Welcome to the new world of GNU/Linux, where brands are merely trademarks of companies which increasingly treat “community” as convenient PR/free labour and do what the heck they want. I decided to give the nice Irishmen from Mint a go and see if it’s time to live a Minty lifestyle. On Saturday I used Mint 10 and it lasted almost all day. The reason it did not last a whole day will be explained in a moment. As a bit of background, I’ve been exploring Ubuntu alternatives that reject poor decisions from Canonical and take what’s good in Ubuntu. So, I went with Mint. It was not the KDE version, which had not come out before I burned Mint 10 to a CD and then wrote about it some time last month.

“Granted, a lot of credit is given here to Mint for what Ubuntu has done in the same way that Debian receives little or no credit for what it gave to Canonical over the many years.”The desktop experience based on the Live CD was fantastic on good hardware. It hardly felt like a live session at all, it was very polished, the default theme was stunning (although better wallpapers come with the stock), and the selected applications were just right for my needs. The only unexpected downside is that twice throughout the day the session sort of fell. First the mouse pointer vanished from one monitor (just the cursor, the pointer was still functional), then the session froze (just shortly thereafter). Having to restart a live session is a pain because all the stored passwords need to be reentered, not to mention bookmarks and the likes of those. The second crash came just an hour later and it was a real crash, not a freeze that came rather spontaneously. Based on my experience with a Live CD of PCLinuxOS back in 2009, this is not too unusual. Perhaps working uninterrupted for consecutive days on a live session is not too easy. A lot depends on what’s in memory and the CD is a sort of unreliable bus, as well.

All in all, however, Mint 10 is better than anything I’ve ever come across in all the Ubuntu versions I’ve used (almost all of them) and it is definitely worth using. Granted, a lot of credit is given here to Mint for what Ubuntu has done in the same way that Debian receives little or no credit for what it gave to Canonical over the many years.

The new “Techrights headquarters” so to speak has no wired Internet connection yet, which means I must use cellular networks to access the Internet (slow and expensive). As such, there’s going to be no regular posting pace in the week to come (if not week and a half, depending on BT).

Summary: Several reviews of OpenSUSE that we’ve netted, upcoming events, and a lot of technical writings assembled

LAST week was too quiet to be worth a post, so this is an accumulation encompassing two weeks.

The big news is that Zonker is leaving. Project activity in general seems low, but there are many IRC meetings as well as other gatherings.

Events

An OpenSUSE event is being organised in Indonesia and FOSDEM 2010 will feature OpenSUSE too. There are other public events where OpenSUSE appears and the OpenSUSE “Boosters” (yes, they really call themselves that) plan to have presence at events like LinuxTag 2010:

Another show in desperate need on Booster Talks is LinuxTag 2010. Their call for papers is running and every booster shoud put in a talk! There are instructions on the CFP about what they are interested in, what topics they want to focus on, what is expected of speakers and how to submit a talk. So all of us are currently thinking about what we could talk about to the FOSS community.

Regarding FOSDEM, there is also this personal perspective over at the OpenSUSE Web site.

For those new to FOSDEM, all I can say is it is a blast! Seriously, there are people from all over the world there talking about all sorts of things – personally I’m not overly bothered about most of the talks. For me the biggest win from FOSDEM is the social aspect. The pre-event drinks on Friday night are great, and yes I have to admit there is one thing that those adorable little blue Belgians do right – Beer!!! I have met many a great person, some of whom I had never heard of before but many whom I had. The atmosphere just rules.

Advocacy

The SUSE (Rants) Blog says that OpenSUSE will score a small win at another company:

Linux migrations are fun for me to see. It brings happiness to my soul that more companies are seeing the benefits that Linux offers them over propietary operating systems. No more vendor lock-in, more security, freedom to do it how they want, and much lower cost. Well, openSUSE Linux is now finding its way into the company for which I work.

A Geeko postcard was shared by one of the SUSE people and “Geeko wants you!” say the Wiki folks:

Online since August 2005, the openSUSE wiki has proved to be an invaluable resource for users, contributors and developers. However, we had no Quality Assurance step in the publishing procedure for wiki articles.

Sirko has a second part for “Geeko wants you”.

James Ogley has caught up with Planet SUSE, which apparently is too English oriented.

I just did a massive (and I mean HUGE) catch-up on Planet SUSE.

The following person wants more postings in German.

I use from time to time pictures to speak for me, thats for me in easier as write a long english entry. I hope you understand what I mean.

Reviews

This is where OpenSUSE is doing fairly well. Here is an experience with OpenSUSE:

Around every 6 months I back up everything and look at updating my distro. My last update was in the summer when I tried updating Mint and ended up with Ubuntu.

[...]

I then thought to myself why not give the live version of openSUSE a try. The live version was KDE4.3.
Now it identified my video card as the ATI HD3450 without any help from me. It did not recognize the 2 Acer monitors. I was amazed that when I tried to use configure display settings. It worked!

Linux Planet took a look at Li-F-E:

It’s a safe bet that the majority of K through 12 students in this country have access to a computer either at home or school. With education budget trends resembling a ski slope (downhill) it only makes sense to look to open source for help. With the 11.2 release of openSUSE comes a separate project targeted at schools and school children.

One of the best GNU/Linux Web sites (in terms of content) has put many GNU/Linux distributions to the test and decided that OpenSUSE is best for desktops.

There are hundreds of Linux distributions available worldwide, kitted with an infinite number of kernel/desktop/applications combos, each offering a unique perspective and usage model.

Still, true to the Pareto principle, most of the Linux desktop belongs to a very small number of distributions, including mainly Ubuntu and its derivatives, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, and a few more. Hop over to DistroWatch and see for yourself. So the big question is, what makes these distros so popular, or better yet, preferred over other candidates? Ultimately, which one offers the most complete all-round experience of all?

[...]

There you have, Dedoimedo has decreed that is the best overall choice for the average Linux user is openSUSE, effective end of 2009. Dedoimedo has spoke.

It turns out that openSUSE is probably the best distribution for you. It has its ups and downs, but the bottom line, it’s probably the most refined product of all, which is not surprising, given its roots. It’s a business model shipped for free, after all.

Some other people do not have much luck:

I know some people who use Linux, who have a massive collection of Live and Install media which goes back a long ways. If I keep up at this rate, I’ll be one of those people before long.

See, this started a few days ago when Mum decided she didn’t like OpenSUSE, and wanted something new. Her computer isn’t exactly robust, however, so we always try out potential candidates before they touch her computer.

We went through, and settled on Mandriva. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, and I’m sure in other circumstances, I might even have seen a few of them.

There are also some decent video reviews. Here is a good review from early in the week (or last week):

This new one is in German, but it is hardly vocal.

GNOME

Several people, including employees of Novell, have also written about the GNOME side of OpenSUSE (it is no longer the default selection). Here is an explanation of how to change the GNOME menu panel back to GNOME defaults:

Seems like lot of openSUSE Gnome users don’t like the new Gnome panel, which is radically different interface from the traditional Menu bar with Applications/Places/System entries. Personally I prefer the new style, perhaps because I’m used to the openSUSE Kickoff panel, and I really dig the search feature

Also new:

• GNOME 2.28.2 on openSUSE 11.2 Updates more packages for openSUSE

• Locking down GNOME in SUSE 11 based distributions

Locking down the desktop may be an important functionality for you or it may be a major annoyance. This depends on your point of view and on which side of the administration fence you are. There are certainly many use cases where the restriction of desktop functionality is very important. One such use case may be the configuration of machines in a teaching environment.

For GNOME, Sabayon is a GUI tool that allows you to set up the desktop to your liking and store the configuration as a profile. Profiles can be deployed to any system allowing the machine to display the desired desktop based on who logs into the machine. Further you may also use Pessulus to lock down the GNOME desktop. Additional information may also be found in the GNOME Admin Guide.

Technical

Apart from some innocent glitches, installation instructions are being provided for some software [1, 2] and the question of codecs and software patents (in few countries that allow them) rears its ugly head again:

During our last openSUSE Project meeting, there was a discussion on Multimedia Codecs.

There are many OpenSUSE-specific HOWTOs, including:

• How to get your clips on the web

• Eclipse on Stellarium

Stellarium is a free software available for Windows, Linux/Unix and MacOSX. It renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time.. With stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. Packages for openSUSE are available from Education repository on openSUSE Build Service via 1-click install.

• Having trouble with vmware-console & your keyboard mouse

• Ext4 File System Support on openSUSE 11.1 or Older Version

• openSUSE – Create your own Software Repository @ 2

• openSUSE – Get the HTTP Proxy setting in Shell

• Canon MP560 on Opensuse 11.2

• How to set MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) value on OpenSuSe Linux

• How to Find and Clean up Duplicate Files in Ubuntu Linux

• Recover Deleted Files on Linux with Extundelete

• Update without root password?

• Installing OpenSUSE 11.0 KDE on my HP 2133

Since it has been over 6 months since I had installed a windows os on my HP 2133, problems started showing up clueing me into the fact that it was time to wipe the drive, reinstall the os and start all over. My previous set up on my HP 2133 was a tri boot of Windows Vista, Windows 7 (release candidate only), and Ubuntu 8.04.

Packaging/Repos

Katarina has written about YaST again, at one point complaining that people do not appreciate testers:

When the project is finished, hackers are the guys in the spotlight and, sadly enough, QA work often stays unnoticed. Worse even, if the whole thing is a failure, testing squad is the first one to blame (“Damn, those guys must’ve had no QA. What? They had some? What they have been doing all that time then?”). Needless to say, that doesn’t exactly boost one’s confidence in the meaningfulness of his/her work.

To conclude, I’d like to dedicate this post to all our Four-Letter-Project testers (especially to the most active one of them) and to all former, present and future openSUSE testers. Ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for all those heroes, known and unknown!

Some posts about Packman and about OpenSUSE Build Service accompany the announcement of many projects that get a repository or enter a repository. For example:

Now with the aid of the Hermes notification system, you can find out as soon as a new version of software you’re interested in is uploaded to the openSUSE Build Service.

There are also:

• Stable versions of PySide packaged

• PySide packages for openSUSE, Mandriva and Fedora

• Eclipse on Stellarium

• Parallel Development Environments? Pulque!

• 7 Lightweight Linux Browsers You may want to Consider for Fast Browsing Experience

• Openshot Video Editor on openSUSE

• Updates in unstable repo (not only) for openSUSE

• Buddi – Personal Finance & Budgeting Program for openSUSE

• Announce: Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP) 2.0.1 released

• OpenOffice_org 3.2 rc4 available for openSUSE

• Prism 1.0b3

As mentioned in blogs here and here Prism 1.0b3 got somehow released.
I have updated the version I had in mozilla:beta and moved it to the openSUSE mozilla repository (even if it’s officially beta but then there is no previous version so it makes sense).

Kernel

Novell’s Greg Kroah-Hartman (one of the men behind the OpenSUSE project) has offered 98 patches, leading to new releases of Linux 2.6.32 and 2.6.27. In this newly-uploaded video (days old), Kroah-Hartman is shown speaking at LinuxCon 2009. This type of work in the kernel space (also in X) makes OpenSUSE a good contributor. Novell is a separate-but-connected problem.

Leftovers

Apart from this call for testing of GNUMed, Sascha Manns announced the publication of some more Weekly News pages [1, 2, 3]. There has been nothing exceptional going on in OpenSUSE. █

Summary: More reviews of OpenSUSE 11.2, the OpenSUSE Boosters Team, and site theme makeovers

THE release of the latest OpenSUSE is just weeks behind and one of its reviewers, Caitlyn Martin, has some followups on last week's review. In her blog she complains about what she describes as ‘the’ community, as though there is one happy family with a cohesive set of ideas and goals, all living in harmony. The reality is more complex because some factions advocate DRM, others exploit GNU/Linux for cost, and others value Freedom for example. There are many other dimensions of division. In O’Reilly’s domain, she writes some more about the subject in relation to her review of OpenSUSE. She did receive some abuse from people, but this is by no means unique to users of GNU/Linux. It is a little disappointing to see it attributed to people who are classified by the operating system that they use.

In response to this, Rainer Weikusat writes:

I have been a SuSE user for years because the company had the nice habit of burning the content of all larger FTP-servers to CDs and I didn’t have ‘internet’ at home. Usually, I rewrote everything I was forced to look at because it didn’t work in the way I had needed it to work. I tried this on more than one computer and with the intention to actually use these for professional work in 1998 for a very short while. To prevent me from going mad on the spot, I switched to Debian very soon, since I wanted a computer that could be used to accomplish work and not one which only caused work.
.
The last thing I actually saw from SUSE was a couple of years ago, namely, an init-script which contained a complaint from its author that he would need this particular abstruse workaround because some other script “still isn’t fixed”. I assume the idea to fix it instead never occurred to him. And this epitomizes the SUSE mentality for me.

There is other feedback of a similar kind.

Linux Planet has this new review of OpenSUSE 11.2 which is mostly positive.

openSUSE 11.2 is a solid incremental update to a popular distribution. It has enough new and improved stuff in it to make it a definite upgrade for current users. For the curious it’s definitely worth a hard look. On the flip, side this version is not without warts. Issues like proprietary wireless drivers (Broadcom) and some annoyances with Intel 845 graphics will cause newbies to cringe. If you cruise the openSUSE forums, you’ll find workarounds for the most common issues. So go ahead and give it a spin. It might be just what you’re looking for.

Even a tough reviewer of GNU/Linux distributions quite liked OpenSUSE 11.2.

OpenSuSE 11.2 has the most stable and unobtrusive version of KDE 4 I’ve ever used. That’s a big win in my book. I’m sick and tired of having to sacrifice stability and features for eye candy and it’s good to see that finally I can have both (for the most part).

The only real problems I ran into popped up *after* I started fiddling with things, and to give credit where it’s due, SuSE put up with my tinkerings without a crash. What can I say, I’m a fiddler. Now get off my roof.

Another good review calls OpenSUSE 11.2 “James Bond’s choice”.

openSUSE 11.2 is an excellent release. While it is not a revolution that version 11 was compared to 10.3, it builds on the good points and makes them ever better.

openSUSE 11.2 runs faster, smoother, conserves power more wisely, has a more polished desktop, and simpler installation. You get a decent, colorful choice of programs, lots of useful utilities, plus centralized management by YaST, which is smarter and easier to use than ever before.

Not everyone was happy with OpenSUSE 11.2. For example:

I decided to give a new OpenSUSE 11.2 a spin. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake.

Another short review and walk-through says:

openSUSE is my favorite Linux distribution. Linux in general has some usability frustrations as a desktop user, so I hope to share some of the ways they can be dealt with.

Jack Wallen has published the following walk-through which says very little about operation of the distribution.

Once you have taken care of that you are on your way to installation Nirvana. I say that, not necessarily because the installation is the simplest installation you will encounter, but more because it is the cleanest and well thought out installation you might see.

Han Wen Kam wrote about reasons for liking OpenSUSE 11.2 and also some other things.

Luv openSUSE 11.2 so much, especially the default KDE 4.3 GUI..

Not all upgrades went smoothly. Even among core OpenSUSE people we find this (although proprietary software may be guilty).

I’ve upgraded my openSUSE 11.1 64bit using esound to 11.2 64bit recently and the result was no sound in flash (e.g., YouTube and other streamed video) but everywhere else it worked. I’ve googled around a bit but didn’t find anything that would work for me. So I tried to switch to pulseaudio but the result was still the same.

Here is one way in which the release of OpenSUSE 11.2 relates to Fedora 12.

The middle of November was very exciting for both Fedora and openSUSE communities. At first, openSUSE project unleashed its 11.2 release, which was followed by Fedora 12 a few days after. I thought it would be interesting to dig into bug reports which were filed during the development of these two releases in respective bugzillas.

Technical

On the more technical side, OpenSUSE has removed DHT.

The Pirate Bay’s tracker closure has spurred several discussions about DHT, BitTorrent’s fallback technology for when central trackers are unavailable. According to some, DHT has some problems of its own. Novell, for example, decided to ship openSUSE with the BitTorrent client Transmission, but not before stripping DHT support.

Under the pretext of “makes you safer”, OpenSUSE still gets mentioned for its TPM inclusions. This is a subject which had Boycott Novell mentioned in the Dutch press after last week's post.

Apart from some more technical posts about packaging and compiling, there are some posts about Novell’s “boosters” [1, 2, 3, 4] who are promoting SUSE.

On November 20th, the Czech members of the openSUSE Boosters Team organized openSUSE 11.2 Release Party. The party took place in the nice building of Faculty of Mathematics and Physics.

Michal Hrušecký turns out to be among the “boosters”, based on his post about the site’s MediaWiki theme.

As you may or may not know, I’m part of the openSUSE Boosters team and I’m working on umbrella project.

Another theme makeover:

Today I applied the new Robert Lihm’s theme called Bento to GameStore web, so it doesn’t look like a quick hack anymore.

Hrušecký later wrote about MySQL (he often does that) in the OpenSUSE Build Service:

It’s been some time already since I informed you about server: database: UNSTABLE repository in openSUSE Build Service. Today I want to mention what is going on there. As the name of the repository suggests, it’s probably not the best idea to use anything from here on your production servers

OpenSUSE’s Dominique Leuenberger wrote about Compiz 0.8.4. It’s rather ironic that OpenSUSE ships an old version of Compiz despite the origins of this good project.

Doubtless you’re all aware that openSUSE 11.2, as great and up to date it is with many packages, was shipped with an outdated version of compiz version 0.7.8. The reasoning behind this was that some patches for NOMAD just were not able to be forward ported in reasonable time. At one point I started fixing / backporting some fixes from 0.8.4 to 0.7.8 and was granted maintainer status for the compiz packages, which is a great honor to me. Nevertheless, this happened too late in the 11.2 release cycle to include more recent packages. We were already in version freeze and I could never get this through.

Having an out-of-date Compiz is not such a big deal, but according to Heise there is greater trouble involving security at 1&1. OpenSUSE users are affected.

According to a German IT service provider, users running 1&1 servers with openSUSE 11 as their distribution should check the version number of their Linux kernel. In order to guarantee full support for the hardware it uses, for openSUSE, 1&1 installs its own homemade kernel. Unfortunately this kernel disables the YAST auto-update function, with the result that, despite regular updates, the kernel (2.6.27.21) remains several months old – making it vulnerable to a range of root exploits involving null pointer dereference (NPD) and other vulnerabilities.

Leftovers

In other news, Zonker finally speaks to someone not from Novell (i.e. a colleague). It’s the first time in 4 shows and Novell’s PR department is grooming Zonker by promoting his show, as usual (while promoting SUSE in another audiocast of its own).

Lastly, there is OpenSUSE Weekly News with some translations and an audiocast. █

THE previous post contained some new links that compare Vista 7 to GNU/Linux or put these two sides in context. It is not worth spending much time speaking about Microsoft’s launch parties and other such bogus celebrations. Here is just one perspective:

Early adopters always take a hit. But the same problems with Windows continue even though 7 was supposed to be the resolution for the mess that Vista was. When you take into account all the forced compliance issues with Vista and now 7 it does make you wonder if Microsoft has a hand in selling hardware like wireless cards, printers and scanners. In the past Microsoft has done many shady things like being sued for monopolies, paying for good press, bench mark fraud, and flooding the internet with so called “reviews” written by employees.

Another piece says that Vista 7 might be a relic.

People once relied on PCs for e-mail, for instance, but many now get their messages on smart phones and Web browsers through services such as Hotmail or Gmail. Developers are putting their juice into making iPhone apps rather than PC software, or into so-called cloud applications, which run online instead of in Windows.

Has Microsoft built a faster train while the rest of the industry is making planes and automobiles?

Our reader David Gerard has published a parody about Vista 7′s release.

It said it had been “demonised” and repeatedly denied doing things which have been attributed to Vista. It attributed photos of it wearing a T-shirt saying “The Wow™ starts NOW!” to youthful foolishness. Windows 7 also decried the leak of Microsoft’s latest dismal quarterly results on Wikileaks, saying the contents were complete fiction and a breach of private matters between the Microsoft National Party and the financial authorities.

Our reader ‘Goblin’ has found various videos that already show people having problems with Vista 7. Here are 3 examples. █

Windows 7 Problems with 7 Loader. Help!!

Windows 7 Problem playing DVD in Media Center

Windows 7 games problem HELP!!!

Summary: A glimpse at distributors who pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux

SUSE (SLES/SLED)

FOR SUSE it has been an exceptionally quiet week, but SUSE Studio still generates a bit of a buzz and there are also reviews that are largely positive.

I just built my own Linux distribution through my browser. It can be ran as a Live CD or installed on your system. No, you did read that correctly. I actually used Firefox to build my own SUSE-based distro. Sometimes technology throws curveballs at us that are so unbelievable you’d have to read the statement several times to realize that you aren’t hallucinating. Do you think I’m writing a piece of science fiction? Enter SUSE Studio.

[...]

The Good:

* Amazing potential
* A ton of fun

The Bad:

* Builds take a while (that’s to be expected though)

Overall: 5/5 (Outstanding!)

There are other reviews that include more raves like this one. But Novell is behind it.

A Novell employee once told us that, in yesteryear when Novell’s marketing team were pushing brands faster than their coders were pushing software, Novell could easily have switched over to being a T-shirt manufacturing company. It seems their love of marketing hasn’t died out, because TuxRadar HQ recently accepted delivery of a suspicious box. Upon opening it, we found this:

Inside was a bag containing dozens of different parts, some plastic, others carefully cut foam. Next to that was a card pointing us towards the assembly instructions and, 10 minutes or so later, we were the, er, proud owners of one of these:

Great success! And even more fun than building a distro with SUSE Studio…

Further to last week's news about National Vision, there is this hyping up by Novell’s PR people and other SUSE promotion. Unrelated to this, there’s fun stuff such as this new video (“Hacking Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server”).

Novell’s PR department also brings back to life this old success story. Advocacy of SLE* can be found at the usual places and Novell’s own site has some too.

Another new video was nicely done and uploaded twice by Novell:

There is apparently no new business for SUSE though, just marketing and old stories.

Xandros

A mini review of Presto was published at IDG and the product was also mentioned in OStatic, which states:

We’ve written about Splashtop and instant-on compact Linux operating systems before. If you’re on a Windows PC or netbook, these can take you directly into a miniature operating system in about 15 seconds that can allow you to have access to IM, Skype, e-mail, the web and more. Presto is a free download you can get that takes you into a Xandros-based environment in seconds.

Some articles about renewed ASUS rumours mentioned Xandros, e.g.:

Asus may have pulled its experimental Google Android-powered netbook from sight after teasing journalists with it at Computex in June. But that doesn’t mean the company is sticking to Windows and Xandros Linux. Sascha at NetbookNews says a reliable source has told him that Asus will launch a netbook with Moblin Linux in October.

There are many similar posts in Russian and all sorts of other languages. There might be other ongoing attempts to put Xandros on small computers. From PC Pro:

Asus will deliver an Eee PC running the Moblin operating system in October, according to reports.

[...]

Though unconfirmed, the rumours aren’t too difficult to believe – Asus has long flirted with open source. Its original Eee PC ran a modified version of Xandros and its high-end motherboards are equipped with the Linux-based Splashtop “instant-on” OS. There were also reports it was ready to launch a netbook based on Android, though those have quietly fizzled out.

Moblin uses another variant of Ballnux, namely SUSE. There may as well be hidden patent tax. Also on Xandros (from an unrelated press release):

– Announced that Synchronoss has partnered with Xandros, the leader in providing seamless Windows-Linux interoperability and open source netbook software solutions. Together, the companies offer the first single-source solution to automate the activation and provisioning of netbook devices on 3G and 4G wireless networks.

Scalix was mentioned in a press release of its own.

Turbolinux

6 years before selling out to Microsoft, Turbolinux pondered an IPO. Here is a reminder of that.

Turbolinux (OSE :3777)
Having canceled its IPO in late 2001, Turbolinux eventually found its way to the stock market in September 2005 via an IPO on the Japanese Osaka Securities Exchange. Between those events, the Japanese Linux distributor was owned by Software Research Associates and then Livedoor. Turbolinux’s shares continue to be traded on the Osaka Securities Exchange.

Curiously, there has been no word about Manbo in ages. █

Summary: Months before the release of Vista 7 and Windows Mobile 6.5 there are troubling signs

PARTICIPANTS of this Web site occasionally offer a story about their experiences with Vista 7, which is all about marketing. There is an example from April and also from earlier this month. Another short review comes from a reader whose experiences are reproduced verbatim below:

I installed Vistas 7 RC1 on my Acer Aspire 7220, with these isues:

- 1400×900 flatscreen was recognized as a 800×600 CRT;
- Nvidia Geoforce 7000M GPU was recognized as a standard VGA adapter;
- Nvidia nForce Ethetnet adapter was not recognized at all;
- Atheros PCI WLAN adapter was not recognized at all.

I downloaded the Vista drivers from the Acer website on my Fedora 10 machine (Pleunix) and copied them to a USB thumbdrive. Installed them on Vista 7. However I was still unable to make any connection (neither wired nor wireless) to “the Internet”.

Vista 7 didn’t understood that my Sitecom (Linux) wireless router/firewall/switch/nat only serves as a access point and switch behind another router. That is obviously too complicated for Vista 7.

After 12 hours I gave up and re-installed Ubuntu 9.04 on that machine.

My final conclusion: Vista 7 is even worst that Vista if it’s not preinstalled.

I am wondering if people are stupid enough to pay for that piece of junkware.

The point about poor hardware support is also emphasised in this brand new blog post which starts as follows:

5 Things Microsoft does not want you to know about Windows.

Truth no 1
You are paying way more than you are getting. This is a simple truth that most users of Windows do not seem to appreciate. Why do you have to pay as much as $100 to get a license to use an OS which is bare to the bones? An installation of Windows is just the first in a series of long processes to make your computer useful. Your computer can in virtually all cases not be used to do anything meaningful after a Windows installation until you have installed numerous third party drivers and other utilities most of which you would have to pay for separately. That is very much being short changed to me.

Truth no 2
You are never safe with Windows. The recent DDOS attacks on Twitter and Facebook makes it very clear that if anything at all, Windows is a very big threat to the future of the internet and computing in general.

This second point was also addressed here before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

It is interesting to note that the “mobile” version of Windows seems to be on its death throes and this is even covered by a news Web site right now.

Did Microsoft Just Throw WinMo Under A Bus?

[...]

Just don’t act surprised when the next version of Windows Mobile turns out to be the last.

Microsoft bought Danger for a large sum of money and some say that Microsoft was pressured to buy RIM (for BlackBerry). There are still many writeups about Microsoft’s prospects with Palm, but that would be Linux based. Either way, Windows Mobile has been a great financial failure for Microsoft and there is no sign of this trend reversing. Microsoft is now trying to get Symbian (Nokia) to help out. One reader, Patrick McFarland, argues that both Windows and Windows Mobile will be replaced by Microsoft, but we cannot confirm such a claim. █

Summary: Another glance at H-P’s embrace of SLED 11; other notable news about SUSE and Xandros

SLED

SOME days ago we commented on H-P's support of SLED. Further to that, all the following items mention Novell and SLED in the same context:

• HP Targets SMBs With Low-Cost Laptop Line
• HP Unwraps Notebooks Aimed at Small Businesses
• HP’s ProBook series of laptops ‘inspired by minimalism’
• HP Unveils Low-Cost Business Laptops
• HP offers Linux on new ProBook business laptops
• HP unveils ProBook s-series laptops for the businessperson who needs a bit more power
• Hewlett-Packard Launches Low-Cost Laptop
• Blending Business Chic With Affordability, HP Unveils HP ProBook Notebook PC Line
• HP Rolls Out New ProBook Notebooks
• HP Launches ProBook with Linux Pre-Installed
• HP Unveils ProBook, New Line of Biz Laptops

IDG reviewed SLED 11 and had some good words to share.

SLED’s dual listing of certain applications in both the YaST resource management window and in the Control Panel had us scratching our heads on what to pick out of the many open source applications included with the bundle. This confusion extends to having Hardware>Control Center choices duplicated as Network Devices under YaST as well. There’s no real harm in this double listing, it’s just confusing.

SLED 11 was also reviewed by IT Pro, which gave it high marks.

The answer to the question of whether you could eliminate Windows on your desktop clients and replace them with SLED 11 is yes. There are very few remaining issues that will prevent SLED working with an existing Windows/Active Directory infrastructure. If your desktop systems are purely used for standard administration and Microsoft Office tasks, SLED 11 will do it, albeit at the potential cost of grumbling employees. For any worker with specific non-Office application requirements it’s more difficult of course, but SLED 11 is a good move along the road to complete interoperability.

SLES

On the server side, SUSE was not mentioned so much, but the following articles about ‘clouds’ showed IBM’s role in spreading SLES:

i. Amazon EC2 Offers IBM Apps by the Hour

Amazon’s Thursday announcement follows a February announcement of a partnership between Amazon and IBM to provide software developers pay-as-you-go access to development and production versions of IBM Information Management database servers, IBM Lotus content management, and IBM WebSphere portal, as well as middleware products, all running on Novell’s SUSE Linux on Amazon EC2.

From Timothy Prickett Morgan:

ii. IBM slips Power6+ into racks, blades

IBM can throw more memory at each thread than an x64 box can, at least for now. And on virtualized server workloads, this is what matters as much (and perhaps more) than clock speeds. The Power 550 can support up to 80 logical partitions, which can run IBM’s AIX or i operating systems or the Linuxes from Red Hat and Novell. It has the same I/O slot configuration and 3.5-inch disk bays as the Power 520, and its rPerf performance ranges from 21.18 (two cores running at 5 GHz) to 78.6 (eight cores running at 5 GHz).

iii. IBM unloads Nehalem towers, clusters

Anyway, with this week’s announcement, the Nehalem EP servers announced in March – the x3550 M2 and x3650 M2 racks, the HS22 blade, and the dx360 M2 hybrid – can all be the foundation of a Cluster 1350. IBM can put Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, or Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008.

There is also some new information about SLE training for administrators.

Novell Linux Certifications

Novell recently rolled out one new Linux certification, the Certified Linux Desktop Administrator (CLDA), and is expected to soon go live with the Certified Linux Administrator (CLA), as well (the exam numbers are 050-708 and 050-710, respectively). Both consist of a single exam on SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 that’s administered through either Prometric or VUE testing centers.

Xandros

The company bets and spends heavily on Presto at the moment. It still received some overage, e.g. from CNET Asia:

Though there are several “instant on” solutions out there, like Lenovo’s Splash-top on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (pictured), Asus’ ExpressGate and Xandros’ Presto, you cannot actually boot into Windows immediately. Instead, what you are booting into is an alternative stripped-down Linux environment. Though there are many fctors involved, one of the reason Windows is unable to achieve instant boot times is because it has many background processes which require the system to run through many more lines of binary code compared with a Linux operating system.

This last sentence is poor because it shows that the writer is not IT-savvy or simply technology-illiterate. “Lines of binary code” hardly makes any sense. Here is another essay about Presto and here is the response offered to one person who is after Xandros/Eee despite the fact that Microsoft is said to be bribing ASUS for Xandros suppression.

Pasadena, CA: Hi Brian: I’m thinking about buying the ASUS EEE PC 1000 Netbook with Xandros Linux OS to avoid virus, malwares and all nasty stuffs. Do I/Should I install/use Linux anti-virus program like the free Avast Linux anti-virus program? Thank you, Don I’ve been reading your articles religiously

Brian Krebs: I wouldn’t worry about anti-virus software if you’re running Xandros/Linux. Just make sure you follow best practices, such as not running the system all the time as “root”. You might invest in a backup program to make an image of the drive (chances are extremely good that capability is built into the OS itself) in case something goes wrong.

Lastly, this German press release acts of a reminder that Scalix still plays a role at Xandros. █

We wrote about the release of SLE* 11 on Tuesday and on Thursday, where we separately remarked on Novell’s announcement. Here is the official announcement/press release (also in Linux Electrons). We start with Novell’s own coverage.

The Spinners

Novell’s PR Director, Ian Bruce, wrote about this release and there was a chunk of videos from Grant Ho who works for him.

Except for E-mails that Novell’s PR department must have sent to many reporters, here is its direct output from the past week:

1. It’s here!
2. Grant Ho Episode 5 – It’s here!
3. We couldn’t do this alone

We covered some more of it before and we usually find that they throw some of that IDC 'study' into it, despite the fact that Novell paid for it too.

In an article that quotes us, SJVN calls SLED/SLES 11 “Novell’s marriage of Linux and Windows.” “I believe you pronounce SLES as ‘sleeze’,” says one person in Digg in response to this article.

.NET-savvy or Microsoft-savvy? Microsoft Linux?

Coverage from Jupitermedia was particularly interesting because it treats Novell’s submission to Microsoft as though it’s all fine and dandy. Here is what Sean wrote:

Novell generates a large portion of its Linux revenues from Microsoft as a result of a November 2006 deal between the two companies. SLES 11 benefits from the Microsoft partnership and will offer at least one feature that no other enterprise Linux distribution has ever had, support for Microsoft’s .NET framework.

The .NET support comes by way of the Novell led Mono effort which to date has only been available on community Linux distributions like Novell’s openSUSE and Red Hat’s Fedora. Red Hat has told InternetNews.com in the past that it was not interested in including Mono with its Red Hat Enterprise Linux release.

Technically, Novell is calling the .NET support, SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension. It’s intended to enable users to run fully supported Microsoft .NET-based applications on Linux.

Some corresponding comments can be found here.

Eric Lai, who typically covers Microsoft and its intersections with OSS, wrote an article stating that “With SUSE Linux 11, Novell draws even closer to Microsoft”

The latest version of SUSE Linux Enterprise, Novell’s commercial distribution of the open-source operating system, bears more fruit from Novell’s controversial two-and-a-half-year-old interoperability alliance with Microsoft.

Here is the comments section where it says:

[A]s much as I like SuSE as a distribution: I’m inclined to avoid it in order to prevent dragging myself into the fray and to watch the situation very carefully to examine what evidence might come forth as to Microsoft’s true end goal.

Other Announcement Coverage

Being a major announcement, it has received a lot of coverage. Here is what we netted.

The Inquirer: Novell SUSE Linux 11 out

AFTER TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING, Novell is releasing latest flagship SUSE Linux platform.

Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 11 are the first major updates since SLES and SLED 10 in 2006.

Pam Derringer at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com: SUSE 11 could boost Linux adoption with cloud

Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 debuts today with numerous enhancements that should boost performance in the data center. Novell and IBM also teamed up on a cloud computing initiative that could potentially bolster SUSE Linux adoption in the long term.

Alastair Otter at Tectonic: Novell releases Suse Linux Enterprise 11

Novell yesterday released Suse Linux Enterprise 11 which includes a number of features intended to make the operating system interoperate better with Microsoft’s Windows OS. Major changes in the interests of interoperability include improvements in systems management, virtualisation and document formats.

Desktop Linux: SLE 11 adds enterprise features

Meanwhile, Novell has added a number of enterprise-oriented features and extensions to the new SLE distros, led by the new Mono support for .NET compatibility. Novell points to its somewhat controversial five-year partnership with Microsoft as a key to helping make SLE 11 work seamlessly with Microsoft Windows “in cross-platform virtualization, systems management, identity/directory federation, and document compatibility,” says the company.

David Meyer at CNET and ZDNet: Novell releases Suse Linux Enterprise 11 (also in mirrors)

Paula Rooney at ZDNET: Novell delivers SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

Richard Adhikari at ECT: Novell Aims for the Clouds With Suse Enterprise 11

David Berlind at InformationWeek: Podcast: New Rev Of SUSE Linux First To Officially Support .NET, Silverlight

Charles Babcock at InformationWeek: Novell Launches Suse 11 With Eye On Virtual Appliances

Daniel Robinson at VNUNET: Novell ships Suse Linux Enterprise 11 (also in here)

J.A. Watson at ZDNet UK: SuSE Linux Enterprise 11 Released

Kevin McLaughlin at CRN: Novell Takes Wraps Off SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

Liam Lahey at eChannel Line (strongly pro-Novell): Novell ships SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

LinuxQuestions: SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Released

OSDir: Novell SUSE Linux 11 Release

Heise Online: SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

Heise: SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 released

TechRadar: SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 is here

ITNews( in Italian): IT: Novell presenta SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

OSNews Novell Releases Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11

Zmanda piggybacked this announcement to issue one of its own

Zmanda Delivers Data Protection for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell

Zmanda™, the leader in open source backup and recovery software, today announced that its flagship products, Amanda Enterprise 3.0, and Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL 3.0 have been certified on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL – News), the Linux platform that drives mission-critical computing from the desktop to the data center, for physical and virtual environments.

Beyond the Announcement

The Novell channel peddled a SLE 11 wallpaper and a review came from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, who had received a copy of SLED 11 in advance. Being a pragmatist who has been a SUSE user for years, he concluded with:

SLED, with all of its Microsoft integration, isn’t a Linux for free software purists. But it is a desktop Linux distro that makes a fine drop-in replacement for Windows at most offices.

Why would you want to do that? Because while there are some things that Windows users take for granted, such as being locked into Microsoft’s document formats, there are security threats, such as Conflicker, that could destroy a business. If you want Windows compatibility, but you’d prefer a cheaper and more stable and secure alternative, then SLED 11 is the desktop operating system for you.

Here are SJVN’s screenshots and here is long analysis from The Var Guy, who has not tried SLED 11 yet (so he mostly echoes what he hears from Novell or the press).

The Indian press combined news about the economy with this release of SLE.

Strengthening its strategy for open source and Linux, Novell recently announced its latest offering in SUSE Linux – the Enterprise Version 11. The new version comes to the market almost a year and a half after Novell released version 10.

Amy Newman, who writes about virtualisation, asks about the effects on this release from Novell on her area of interest/focus.

On Tuesday, Novell released version 11 of Suse Linux Enterprise Server. Key feature improvements are enterprise Mono support (.NET on Linux), high availability enhancements and a streamlined operating system build geared toward appliance vendors.

Even more significantly, is SLES 11′s shift in focus. As virtualization has gained ground, vendors and analysts alike have been eulogizing the operating system. It appears Novell is among the first to take the message seriously.

So that’s about all for the time being. Moe reviews will surely come soon. █

–Neelie Kroes (about Microsoft), February 27^th, 2008

Last year we foresaw a situation where Microsoft would use a new (rebranded) operating system to promote its own Web services and formats, thus abusing its monopoly. According to the following short report, this may already be actualising.

Now it is time for the Windows 7 Anti-Competitive in Nature part. I opened IE8Beta2 and it prompted me to choose either express settings or customizable settings….. which do you think I picked. I did not want to search with Live Search. I do not want to Define with Encarta. I never want to blog with Live Spaces. Most of all I just want to use Google Mail instead of Windows Live Mail. Not that I have anything against Live mail as I do have an account and it does look really nice as the designers have finally figured out what we the customer wants.

I had decided to go to customize the preferences… Guess what! The Windows Live stuff is still recommened in every box that pops up afterward! it doesn’t want you to use google search. It doesn’t want you to use maps with google or yahoo. This started to just get plain Silly as all I could do was to keep myself from deleting the IE8 executable from the computer and not leave any marks on that nice computer.

As for the quality of Vista 7, reviewers are sometimes underwhelmed, but then again, it was expected all along.

I take the Windows 7 Beta plunge and find the waters a bit choppy.

This remains an exercise in marketing at Microsoft [1, 2] and marketing of this kind is best tackled by search for evidence [1, 2, 3]. █

More Release Coverage

LAST week we wrote about the release of 11.1 and here is the official press release that we neglected to add (also here, along with this modified press release). There are some shallow announcements that pretty much repeat the contents of the press release, which is always disappointing.

Here is LinuxPR (JupiterMedia/LinuxToday) announcing it a little differently.

After 6 months of development, the openSUSE Project is ready to release openSUSE 11.1 today!

There is also a word about OpenSUSE-Education and Francis Giannaros, who leans towards KDE4 in OpenSUSE, promoted the release in the KDE news Web site (the Dot).

openSUSE 11.1 is now out (screenshots), featuring KDE 4.1.3 and a string of KDE improvements. The release brings back the much-loved KDE-PIM suite, and includes new games, the KSCD CD player, KSystemLog to keep track of system changes, improvements to Dolphin, Konqueror (including Webkit part), Plasma (including auto-hide panel, folder view), Marble integration with OpenStreetMap, and much more. The release is available as an installable live CD, or on a DVD with KDE 3.5.10, GNOME, Xfce, and many more applications.

OpenSUSE presented its KDE desktop just before the release.

openSUSE 11.1 continues a long history of shipping a well-polished KDE. This release includes not just one, but two choices of KDE. You can choose from the leading edge of KDE development with KDE 4.1.3, or the classic KDE experience with KDE 3.5.10.

Technical

Following the release, Falko Timme released some guides for setting up OpenSUSE as a desktop and also as a server.

This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 11.1 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of OpenSUSE 11.1, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

SUSEGeek/suseuser is back to posting following this new release and it’s being promoted all around the Web. Bill Beebe wrote about his early experiences as well. He seems to have developed some form of an unhealthy obsession for Boycott Novell because he keeps attacking us from his blog.

Licence

There were several posts that covered the EULA situation, which we mentioned last month. These include:

1. OpenSUSE rev’s license, build system

The Novell-sponsored openSUSE Project announced the availability of version 11.1 of its open-source openSUSE Linux distribution. Version 11.1 offers a new license that eases redistribution, and it’s the first version developed with the openSUSE Build Service, which improves collaboration and transparency among contributors, says openSUSE.

2. OpenSUSE changes licenses

Available only in English for now (with translations in progress), and modeled on Fedora’s highly successful license, the new EULA aims to raise fewer eyebrows than the old license, Community Manager Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier suggests in a detailed interview on our sister site, DesktopLinux.com.

Zonker wrote about no GNU/Linux distribution being free.

I found this post particularly interesting in the light of the openSUSE 11.1 release. We decided we wanted to make sure that openSUSE was freely redistributable, and get rid of the old EULA, but we don’t claim that the release is “100% free” in terms of the software meeting the Free Software Foundation’s definition of free, or even the Open Source Initiative’s terms for being called “open source.”

Way to justify OpenSUSE’s mistakes. This is a good example of “blame everyone else or accuse them of being equally bad” to justify one’s own deficiencies or sins. Microsoft does this a lot when it labels other companies “evil” and argues that its financial practices are commonplace.

Review

Several more people have already tested OpenSUSE 11.1 and wrote about their experiences. These are not necessarily reviews, but they can be treated as a sample of tests:

DistroWatcfh: First look at openSUSE 11.1

openSUSE truly is a great Linux product and 11.1 is the best so far.

[...]

My only reservation is to do with proprietary codecs and drivers, which still needs some work to reach the same level as other distributions. For new users, this is still just too hard. I tried to get 3D working with ATI’s proprietary driver and gave up in the end (X worked, but no 3D due to OpenGL errors). The ‘recommended packages’ feature of the package manager is a great idea and does install MP3 support automatically, but this is still second rate and users expect more. Overall I really feel that this version of openSUSE provides a complete desktop experience for the user.

Rob Readings: OpenSuSE 11.1 sadness

I was really excited about OpenSuse 11.1. I downloaded it the day it was released, burned it in windows, and installed it on my Linux/experimental computer. My goal was to see if OpenSuse 11.1 can finally be a full blown replacement for windows.

[...]

I have always used KDE. I think it has a more crisp, elegent look to it. But Gnome on OpenSuse 11.1 looks pretty nice. So far I havn’t had any major glitches. Beagle caused it to run at a snails pace, so I uninstalled that and it helped a lot. The repositories have me pulling my hair out. Every time they refresh or when I try to download a packet through software management I get “Can not resolve address” after I click retry 2-3 times it finally does it. But then it usually does the same thing for the next packet. I hope it’s just due to the traffic on the repository servers being high with this new release.

BEAR 454: Christmas came a week early for openSUSE users!

Back in June I blogged about my first experiences with openSUSE 11.0. Although there were some groundbreaking improvements, the general tenor of my experience was negative. I did eventually move to 11.0, as I saw improvements appear from the community (such as a recipe for making Firefox3 use the system’s Cairo library, thus enabling subpixel hinting.) I also suggested that 11.1 would fix all major issues introduced in 11.0, but not add any substantially new features. I stand corrected: 11.1 does fix the issues I whined about, but does also, amazingly, incorporate quite a bit of ‘newness’.

[...]

The Intel video driver still prevents me from using Compiz on multiple monitors. Intel chipsets, starting with the i945, are capable of handling textures up to 8096×8096, earlier chipsets (down to the i810) has a max texture of 2048×2048. Despite the physical capability, and the presence of patches that prove it works, the intel driver still ships with the lower limit, which prevents Compiz from rendering a texture across my two 1200px-wide monitors. Sigh.

Slaya Chronicles: Some thoughts on OpenSUSE 11.1 KDE version

Yay! Another OpenSUSE release. And like some dewy-eyed and shameless groupie, I used (or misused?!) the company’s fast Internet line to download the latest KDE Live CD.

[...]

I would say that OpenSUSE 11.1 is a solid distro. KDE 4.1.3 still feels like unfinished but the OpenSUSE guys managed to tame it to the point it is somewhat usable.

Ben Kevan: 5 Days on openSUSE 11.1 was an early X-Mas present

I have been quite busy with a major project with work and that’s kept me from being able to write as much about openSUSE 11.1 as I have about previous versions. The lack of content from me in no way be taken as a dissapointment because my 5 day report on openSUSE 11.1 is pretty good.

Bill Beebe: openSUSE 11.1 installed and running

KDE 4.1 and openSUSE 11.1 have their quirks. But overall I like how it’s working, and the fact that I can install what I consider core to get work done. DVD playback is a nice-to-have and I’ll get it installed over the next couple of days (when I find the time). It is a comfortable development environment; I have my tools, my shells, and my languages of choice (Java, Ada, c/c++, objc/c++, Python) at the latest revisions running on an OS foundation I know and can work with.

Kasperian Moving Parts: OpenSUSE 11.1 and nVidia == AWESOME!!

And, of course, KDE 4.2 is continuing to to shape up and look, feel, and perform absolutely marvelously, and OpenSUSE 11.1’s beta2 packages are a great way of testing it out.

As for me, I’m just thankful to have a functional laptop again and I hope to get some good KPilot testing and bug squashing done during the next few days of Christmas vacation.

Digests

There is a good number of bits and pieces about OpenSUSE in this Christmas Special from Softpedia.

The openSUSE team proudly announced on December 18th the final release of openSUSE 11.1, a version injected with more than 230 new features and improvements, KDE 4.1.3, GNOME 2.24.1, OpenOffice.org 3.0, a brand new license, Liberation fonts, openJDK and many more. Judging from the included applications and technologies, we can say that openSUSE 11.1 is indeed a bleeding-edge Linux distribution. Without further introduction, let’s take a look at the major changes since openSUSE 11.0:

The OpenSUSE Web sites has this interview with Petko Petkov and also a large accumulation of weekly news.

In this week:

* openSUSE 11.1 out
* Lee Matheson: NEWBIES – Suse-11.1 Pre-installation
* Joe Brockmeier: Leaping lizards! Lots going on in the openSUSE community
* Petr Mladek: OpenOffice_org 3.0 beta1 available
* Comments on Phoronix Benchmarking openSUSE 11.1

Happy new year’s wishes to everyone. Let’s hope that 2009 is not the next 1929. █

Some early reviews of OpenSUSE 11.1 are beginning to trickle in and several of them highlight the problems in more obvious ways than reviews which we mentioned on Saturday.

Here is one person’s horrific start with OpenSUSE 11.1:

In the past 24-hours with the latest openSUSE 11.1, I’ve had a horrific experience. And while I’ve not given up on the distribution, I’m putting down my experiences here neither as a call for help nor as a rant to keep people away. Rather, an honest approach spreads honest knowledge… and hopefully I will be proved wrong, and others will not make the same “mistakes?” I made. What follows is a quick historical recount of my experiences with openSUSE and also my current trauma.

This one was posted in USENET:

    Message-ID: <%Fc3l.12739$i_6.11499@newsfe11.ams2>
    From: The Lost Packet <jmthelostpacket@googlemail.com>
    Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
    Subject: OpenSuSE 11.1 PPC Part II
    Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:34:49 +0000
    User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 (Windows/20081105)
    Organization: virginmedia.com

Not much to tell, I haven’t tested it (the memory) and have no intention
to do so ‘cos it works thus far and that’s all that matters to me.

Really all I did was to add the 11.1DVD to a virgin 10.3 install as an
update repository. After adding kernel, KDE and proprietery ATI drivers
as the update package and resolving the few dozen dependencies that
cropped up (which mainly consisted of “<i>gnore this conflict and carry
on”), YaST updated the install to 11.1 and after that, allowed me to
autoupdate everything else via YUM. Have fun! Warning, when you get a
stack of XML files downloading it’ll take an hour or so on a fast link;
you know the kernel update’s worked and it’s updated the version key as
well, it’ll be downloading the latest patches for 11.1 rather than for
10.3 which seems to be AWOL. Though, for some reason it requires the
10.3 disc to clear the update cache the first time round… hohum.

(cc of a reply to a private message)

There are a few more positive experiences that we will mention later, but either way, comprehensive reviews typically conclude that SUSE is matched or surpassed by its competition that has no ties to Microsoft. █

The word “sabotage” is a bit strong, so we put it in scare quotes. But the word sabotage was previously used to describe Microsoft’s malicious interception of a big OSDL announcement [1, 2], the sabotage of PlayStation3 launch parties, and similar not-so-laudable conflicts throughout VMware’s big event [1, 2, 3]. There is a whole long history there and Novell is inheriting Microsoft’s tactics now [1, 2].

Ryan Paul sort of fell into Novell’s trap in his coverage of the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0. It does begin with some good bits though.

OOo supports several file formats, but uses OASIS’s OpenDocument Format (ODF) by default. ODF is rapidly gaining widespread acceptance and is also supported by Google Docs, Zoho, IBM’s Lotus Notes, and KDE’s KOffice project. ODF is increasingly being adopted as the preferred format by government agencies in many different countries. This trend has placed pressure on Microsoft, which has agreed to include native ODF support in future versions of Office.

Towards the end, it becomes rather clear that Novell — albeit through its programmers (well, companies are just people) — is trying to throw mud at this announcement in order to gain greater control over the project.

“There is a whole long history there and Novell is inheriting Microsoft’s tactics now.”The headline used by Ars Technica is deceiving because it’s based on the words of a senior Novell employee, whose message is disguised in a seemingly-innocent post about the success of OpenOffice.org. The gentle insults are piggybacking the limelight earned by Sun for a few days.

For clarification, see the other side of this debate. There is no “development stagnation.”

Why would Novell do this? And no, please don’t buy the “I’m just a hacker” defence — an excuse or exemption from “an uncontrolled community” that shelters Novell from many critics (same tactics are being used to defend Mono). It’s possibly done in order to give this illusion that CIOs cannot depend on OpenOffice.org or that “the future is not bright.” It’s a contamination of an important announcement and message at a very strategic time. This timing is not a coincidence and there was possibly a plan and preparation of this.

Either way, the timing of this actual release was good. This came at a good time for special reasons:

OpenOffice 3 launch timed perfectly but will Sun, IBM exploit opportunity?

[...]

As the global economic crisis dries up credit and whacks IT budgets, corporate chiefs and administrators are going to be more open to a Microsoft Office alternative that is more compatible with Microsoft Office.

Novell wants to make more/most of the money from the project (support contracts) while at the same time ably adding some unwanted elements (and potential costs) to this hugely popular software. Novell/Microsoft use as an excuse Sun’s control, but it’s intended to increase their own control (Novell along with Microsoft) as they exaggerate existing and perceived issues in the process. It’s self serving, brutal, and dishonest. It’s about choking Sun, not just subverting Free software using patents, OOXML, and .NET (Sun is a JAVA company).

There is a rebuttal to the Novell FUD, which was posted in the GullFOSS blog. It draws some figures and concludes with the following:

OOo 3.0 was a Major Release and in it many general restructuring and refactoring was started. Also from now on the default file format is based on ODF 1.2 (the standard will be approved soon) instead of ODF 1.1 in OOo 2.x. All these changes could be done in a major step only, because of possible incompatibilities to the the 2.x code line.

This major release was a challenge for all release driver on OOo. Also the OOo teams for QA and L10N had many new things to organize, which didn’t exists on OOo 2.x code line or wasn’t a problem for that updates. Thanks to all the teams for their hard work.

The release was a success if demand is something to judge by, but enormous demand knocked down the key server (index to mirrors) at a most crucial of times. NBR has some more details on that:

One major hitch: intial interest in Open Office 3 was such that the openoffice.org download site crashed, unable to cope with the traffic (and as I write, half a day into the release, there are still “technical difficulties”).

As the world turns to cost savings and real standards like ODF, such demand needs to be expected and appropriate preparations made. As Bob Sutor indicates in his latest essay, the world is rapidly embracing ODF as a national standard. He presents a map of nations extracted from his presentation slides.

What always strikes me at such gatherings is the passion of those who have committed to adopting ODF. You get people who have decided for all the usual reasons that ODF makes sense for their use, or that of their department, or their agency, or their government. We’re seeing interesting and varying bottom up, top down, and middle out patterns of adoption in different parts of the world.

Any smart CIO (or small business) should invest in software which is controlled by customers and end users. Anything other than that, especially in schools, is a case of letting people become ‘addicted’ — as Bill Gates put it — to a particular vendor. Moreover, in the case of education, there is a chance and even a responsibility to teach children transferable skills using Free(dom) software. This can help them build their own economy (just watch Brazil go). All countries should do this and some already do.

Lastly, Ovum has this so-and-so analysis of argumentation involving document formats.

The debate on ODF versus OOXML continues to rage, with ISO offering to take on the maintenance of the ODF standard that is currently under the care of the standards body OASIS. This follows resignations from the Norwegian standards body, Standard Norge, with accusations that there were improprieties in the OOXML adoption vote.

Added below is some press coverage for a sense of completeness.

Release Coverage

Here is the press release.

Celebrated at a launch party in Paris today, and just in time for the eighth birthday of the project, the OpenOffice.org Community today announced the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0. The third major update of the leading productivity suite delivers significant enhancements and advanced, extensible, productivity tools for all users, including Mac users, as OpenOffice.org now runs natively on the Mac OS X platform.

Other coverage includes:

Heise: OpenOffice.org 3.0 Reviewed

OpenOffice.org is a free cross-platform office suite, originally developed as the proprietary StarOffice suite. It combined a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation tools and was available for Unix and Windows based systems. The StarOffice code was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999 and released under a LGPL/Sun licence in 2000. In 2005, OpenOffice.org’s licence became LGPL only, prompting greater adoption by the open source community and Linux distributions. Now, OpenOffice.org is about to release their third major version of what is the de facto standard in open source office productivity.

iTWire: OpenOffice 3.0 released, ready for download

Finally out of the beta and release candidate versions, Sun Microsystems’ OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been released for anyone to download and try for themselves. Here’s my “first look” at this brand new Office suite!

Linux.com: OpenOffice.org 3.0 is an incremental improvement

At least OpenOffice.org’s frumpy interface is familiar. And with all the changes in version 3.0, most users will probably discover at least half a dozen ways in which their office productivity is suddenly easier.

Ars Technica: OpenOffice.org 3.0 officially released

The new version offers some aesthetic enhancements and usability improvements, including a new icon set that makes the user interface cleaner and a convenient slider control for adjusting page zoom. OpenOffice.org 3.0 also has a new launcher interface, improved support for annotations, and a handful of other new features.

Examiner: Treat yourself to a suite alternative: OpenOffice.org 3.0

Your mileage will definitely vary, and how much it varies depends on just how you use these productivity applications. Although, given the fact that OpenOffice.org is one free 150MB-ish download away, it can’t hurt to give it a run in your own productivity environment.

IT Pro: OpenOffice 3.0 now available for download

New features in the word processing software ‘Writer’ include multilingual support, better zoom tools for editing, and the ability to edit web-based wiki documents. The spreadsheet, called ‘Calc’ now supports 1024 columns per sheet and a collaboration mode for multiple users, as well as a new equation solver. Graphics program ‘Draw’ can now manage images up to three square meters in size, while presentation software ‘Impress’ now has a table designer.

Web Monkey: OpenOffice 3.0 Embraces Microsoft File Formats and Adds Mac Support

Other changes include a “Start Center”, some new, more legible icons, and a zoom control in the status bar. On the whole the beta doesn’t look much different than previous versions, but each of OpenOffice’s apps have received some welcome new changes features like improved PDF creation throughout and a much better Notes tool in Writer, the OpenOffice word processor.

This last article wrongly claims that “OpenOffice 3.0 Embraces Microsoft File Formats.” It’s a common mistake that’s repeated in some other Web sites.

There will be many more articles, but most of the actual news is already out there for everyone to see.

A certain Novell hacker contacted us a couple of hours ago, so the contents of this post were changed slightly. █

THIS is an accumulation from a whole fortnight, so pardon the inclusion of just many quotes and very little accompanying commentary.

Releases

There were a couple that came close in terms of timing Beta 1 of OpenSUSE 11.1 made its debut a fortnight ago.

The openSUSE Project is happy to announce the first beta release of openSUSE 11.1. openSUSE 11.1 includes quite a few improvements and new features over the 11.0 release, including new versions of KDE, GNOME, the Linux kernel, improved YaST modules, and much more!

It was also sort of advertised by Zonker’s colleague here.

The openSUSE Project recently announced the availability of openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 for wide scale testing and bug squashing. This development release is available in x86, x86-64 and PPC architectures as a DVD disk image (liveCDs are not available for the current beta).

The 11.1 beta provides a decently solid look at where the final release is heading. As with any development release, there are known bugs that vary in severity and new or updated features that the development team is encouraging users try out, in order to find and resolve any bugs and suggest changes and improvements.

Just a short while ago, Beta 2 was released as well. It hopefully resolves the serious kernel issue (contained in a near-final Linux release candidate).

The first beta release for 11.1 was so popular, we’ve decided to do it again! The openSUSE Project is happy to announce the release of openSUSE 11.1 beta 2, available for immediate download and testing.

The Enlightenment LiveCD was mentioned before, but here it is again making an appearance. The education version/variant of OpenSUSE 11.0 is finally ready as well.

Reviews

“Review” is a big word, but quite a few people wrote about their experiences with OpenSUSE and the feedback was largely positive. This week we have:

1. OpenSUSE

Everything was perfect and clean-everything you wanted to do could easily be done with only one click of the mouse. OpenSUSE tops Ubuntu with an admirable 9/10.

2. OpenSUSE 11 – A review of the experience on a ThinkPad T40

Considering the stability, excellent hardware support and out of the box usefulness, I have found OpenSUSE to be an excellent choice. It has been very easy to use and installing software such as LyX/LaTeX and WINE has been excellent. Notably I have installed Photoshop through WINE as it’s the only application that I cannot live without in terms of Windows/Mac dependencies. I know Gimp and Krita are there but when you have been using little else other than Photoshop for 13 years, it’s hard to adapt to something else!

3. Distro Review: OpenSUSE 11

I left openSUSE 3 years ago, and for good reason, it sucked. It was buggy, bloated, slow, and horribly unfriendly to use. So let’s skip ahead 3 years to the present, openSUSE 11.0 is out and I’m ready to forgive past mistakes and give them another shot.

4. OpenSUSE 11 First Impressions

I decided to give OpenSUSE 11 a try on my dedicated Linux box. Since I’ve only installed it and made some adjustments within Gnome, I thought I would give what I can really only call some first impressions of it. I’m writing this post from the OpenSUSE box. The system I installed it on is my few years old Gateway GX7022E – a Pentium D processor (3.0Ghz) with 3GB RAM.

5. OpenSuse 11 is a great distribution.

I decided that I wanted a version of Linux that was polished and stable. I was using Arch and Ubuntu but found them to be way to much work. I thought that a good professional distro to try out would be Open Suse 11. I installed it via the network install disc and transferred that image to all my computers at home and work.

Events

Flights and other journeys are being taken despite Novell’s problems and this year’s Ohio LinuxFest includes Zonker.

The Greater Columbus Convention Center will host this year’s annual Ohio LinuxFest, which will take place on October 10-11. Now at its sixth edition, the Ohio LinuxFest will include a large expo and popular speakers, while welcoming free software developers, open source enthusiasts and virtually anyone who is interested in taking part in this event.

[...]

Joe Brockmeier, openSUSE Community Manager – the man who gives the latest info on openSUSE and who makes sure the openSUSE project has the tools and support required. He contributed to many open source subject books and has worked with many publications from this field.

Brockmeier also traveled to Japan in order to attend their Open Source Conference.

I’m in Tokyo to attend the Open Source Conference (OSC) this weekend, and to meet with the local openSUSE community. I am very excited to be here and have the chance to meet with openSUSE users and contributors (and potential users and contributors), and other members of the open source community.

For those who are interested, from the Linux Plumbers Conference 2008, Greg K-H’s keynote is now available.

Technical Posts

There have been lots of these, but here are several that stood out because they symbolise a matrimony with Apple hardware:

1. How to install openSUSE 11 in OS X using Parallels – a complete walkthrough

This tutorial will take you every single step of the way through installing openSUSE 11 using Parallels Desktop 3.0 for OS X.

2. OpenSuse 10 + Apple G4 Tower – the process

So I’ve been working more on my ImageServer2 application (massive image asset library, replacing Extensis Portfolio Client/Server system) for my employer.

Adrian Schröter wrote about Factory and another Lizard covered development with libyui/libzypp & python. A broader-scoped site offered tips for obtaining codecs under OpenSUSE 11.0.

Support for some multimedia formats isn’t on the openSUSE install media because they’re proprietary, patented, Restricted Formats. Some of these include MP3, MPEG-4, playing of Encrypted DVDs, etc.

A lot of posts came from the polynymous ‘susegeek’/’suseuser’, such as this one and Cyberorg offered news about eye candy, as usual. From Novell/OpenSUSE some came off-topic posts like this one and this from Duncan Mac-Vicar, who looks deeper into technical stuff. Well, it’s his job. But not only Novell employees publish technical advice. Anyhow…

Miscellany

As far as OpenSUSE is concerned, Novell probably has an upper hand over Red Hat/Fedora, whose support offerings lag.

“Fedora is our key open source development platform with the community and we have no plans to change that,” Whitehouse said, explaining that Fedora’s reason for existence was to create the foundation code that eventually makes its way into Enterprise Linux, the commercially supported product.

“It is not something that we look at directly monetizing nor is that something that we have considered.”

It is not exactly a stupid idea, even if such support would probably not be a big money maker. Way back when, when SUSE was an independent Linux supplier, its development release, SUSE Linux Professional, offered 90-day support for a nominal fee.

Over the past few years the openSUSE project has taken over as Novell’s SLES development effort, but Novell nonetheless sells a supported version of openSUSE 11, which will be the basis for SLES 11, for $60.

OpenSUSE has meanwhile undergone another Web site redesign.

Isn’t it fantastic? I liked the old page, but this redesign really looks great. Robert Lihm and Andreas Demmer have done a great job rethinking the page and putting a lot more information on the landing page without making it look cluttered or ugly.

It looks nice and clean. There is (or was) still an opportunity for people outside Novell to earn a place in OpenSUSE.

The openSUSE board met yesterday to go through all the open membership applications. Since many applied in the last days, we had to go over 67 applications. Additionally there were some members that applied after the deadline for voting, we did not look at their applications for now and will handle them later. Out of the 67 applications, we postponed 6 since we first needed to answer some more questions, approved around 30 and rejected the rest. So, we have right now 211 approved openSUSE members.

Here is an E-mail announcement about it:

A bit longer than four weeks ago the board announced the first openSUSE board
election. With the beginning of the next phase of the election process, I
would like to give you a short status update.

Since the initial announcement we raised the openSUSE member count by 50% to
now 212 approved openSUSE members. I am impressed by the enormous interest in
participating in our project.

And we have a total of ten candidates running for a seat in the next openSUSE
board:

Non-Novell
* Pascal Bleser
* Peter Linnell
* Tuukka Pasanen
* Alex Rodriguez
* Jakub Rusinek
* Bryen Yunashko

Novell
* Marco Michna
* Stephen Shaw
* Henne Vogelsang
* Federico Mena-Quintero

Find platforms and contact details for all candidates in the openSUSE wiki:
http://en.opensuse.org/Board_Election/2008#Candidates

= What is next? =

During the next two weeks, each of the 212 openSUSE members is able to give
voting privileges for this election to another user (which is not an openSUSE
member). This person should be an active contributor of the openSUSE community
and needs an account at users.openSUSE.org which has been created before
September, 1st 2008.

The possibility to give franchise to another person is for you the perfect
chance to get a friend or colleague more involved in the openSUSE project. Do
not miss this opportunity and help us to get as much people as possible
participating on the election! Unfortunately I used a wrong variable in the
mail template for the first notification mail, the appointment of additional
voters ends October 9th, 2008 at 12:00 UTC.

Until ballots will open on October, 9th 2008 (12:00 UTC) we have now two weeks
of campaigning, which should be mainly driven by the candidates themselves.
Potentially there will be a public IRC debate with all candidates, but this is
not set yet. If you are interested and have time to support us organizing it,
please get in touch now!

Concluding I would like to thank all candidates for standing, the openSUSE
board for checking more than hundret membership requests, my colleagues from
the election committee and Zonker for their great support.

For more information, OpenSUSE’s weekly news might be of use.

* openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 Now Available
* Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
* openSUSE Build Service Did It!
* Board Election Phase 1 Started
* openSUSE Homepage Redesigned

Next up we cover SUSE. █

The big news of the week was probably this alpha release, which was announced a few days ago. From Christoph’s E-mail:

[opensuse-announce] openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available

Hi everyone,

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available and ready for testing. This time it is
actually installable and bootable But you’ll need to be quick and select
the right boot option from the bootmenu. Due to bug #418619, “Failsafe” is
the default boot option. Please make sure to always select real “openSUSE
10.0.42 – 2.6.26-14″ option!

On x86_64, please make sure to always disable the image-based installation
from the summary screen, before the actual instllation starts!

There will be no LiveCD with this Alpha, but we are planning on doing an
Alpha2plus LiveCD next week.

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available from
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1-Alpha2/iso/

Please also refer to http://software.opensuse.org/developer for further
details and all the direct links.

Known issues / workarounds:

- image-based installation on x86_64 will not work without problem, as the
images on the ISO don’t match the RPMs. You’ll get errors around “unable
to remove pam-config”.

Workaround: always disable image-based installation on x86_64!

- Bug 418619: Failsafe kernel is default in menu.lst

Important: Please make sure to boot the right kernel — failsafe can cause
trouble on some maschines

- Bug 418592: gdm doesn’t start on some maschines

- Bug 418577: Bootloader: cannot update the dynamic configuration policy

- Bug 418729: Could not find /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_…

- various AutoYast-related bugs
* Bug 418574: AutoYast is ManualYast in 2nd stage
* Bug 418707: Firewall services still enabled although disabled in
Autoyast profile
* Bug 418568: uuidgen missing

Here is a review of OpenSUSE 11.0 GM. There’s a breakdown at the end:

The Good

* Installer was easy to use
* Interface was nice
* Configuring things is quick with YAST
* User Friendly
* Pretty Fast when using
* YAST

The Bad

* Technical Language (Not bad for me, but maybe another user)
* Boot Is slow
* YAST for package managing is just a little slow

The Inbetween

* YAST
* Technical Language

Detailed new review of OpenSUSE 11.0:

openSUSE 11.0 is a solid release with all the functionality you could ever need on the installation DVD. If by some chance it’s not on the DVD, you’ll more than likely find it on the openSUSE.org website. Installation is painless and operation is smooth. openSUSE 11.0 is definitely a distribution worthy of your investigation.

Another OpenSUSE ramble:

Simply put I still LOVE openSuse. Of course theres a few things that need work, but overall its a wonderful distro that I strongly recommend.

Ok so for a bit of back story I’ve been using windows since i think 3.1. When i was a kid my dad taught me to use the green screens, and i’ve been using linux off and on since about 2000. Also I’ve rarely used kde.

The OpenSUSE project proudly announced the inclusion of SELinux and Heise covered this shortly afterwards. It will come in the next version.

The next releases of SUSE Linux, OpenSUSE 11.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 (SLES), will see the security extension SELinux moving into the SUSE distribution. SUSE’s current security extension, AppArmour, will remain enabled by default. SUSE describe SELinux’s inclusion as a technology preview and are not offering enterprise suppport or any ready made SELinux security policy files. SUSE say they are focussing on supplying the necessary kernel patches and changes to applications to allow for SELinux operation.

Duncan has this technical post, which is just one among many from SUSEGeek and others.

Today I used some of the coolest openSUSE Build Service features: project layering, patches against linked packages and aggregates. I want to write about them.

The SUSE bootloader got some attention and this detailed article about GRUB and LILO was later published.

You may not realize it unless you are dual booting multiple operating systems, but after your BIOS starts firing up the fan, the microprocessor chip, and the power supply, a boot manager, or bootloader, takes over the process until the kernel starts up.

Linux supports a variety of open-source and proprietary boot managers, but you can install only two with YaST: the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) and the Linux Loader (LILO). GRUB has been the default bootloader for SUSE Linux since v8.2, but LILO still runs quite a few systems, and you may want to use it instead.

Installment #34 of Weekly News came a little late this week (vacation might be the cause). At least it arrived, eventually.

Welcome to issue #34 of openSUSE Weekly News!

In the last two weeks:

* Announcing ENOS 2008
* Join the openSUSE Proofreading Team
* Announcing Hack Week III
* openSUSE TV

The 35^th installment is out now as well.

Welcome to issue #35 of openSUSE Weekly News!

In this week:

* openSUSE 11.1 Alpha2 is available
* Hack Week III is almost here!
* openSUSE to add SELinux Basic Enablement in 11.1
* Masim Sugianto: Linux Distribution Popularity Across the Globe

OpenSUSE will be at FrOSCon tomorrow. It was also there today.

Join the openSUSE Project this weekend, Saturday August 23, and Sunday August 24, at third annual FrOSCon. FrOSCon is a two day conference on Free Software and Open Source, taking place at the Fachhochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in Sankt Augustin near the cities of Bonn and Cologne.

Have a lot of fun. █

It hasn’t been long since the important release of OpenSUSE 11.0. Novell is already trying to downplay the viability of OpenSUSE in order to sell its proprietary software-enhanced SLES/D. Watch this:

The differentiation for corporate customers is what comes next. Why is openSuSE not well suited for corporate use? It’s built by great people, with the purest of intent, and they will want to make things better. The problem is that corporate needs something more.

Given an in-house skilled person (or people), this just isn’t true. Moreover, support can be called from the outside even for a community-driven distribution. That’s how Free software works, and that’s how profit is extracted. Acquisition costs are belittled by maintenance costs no matter if the software deployed is Free or proprietary.

Unconvinced Users

The above example may seem like a bit of a stretch, but OpenSUSE’s woes needn’t be tied to Novell’s attempt to overshadow its presence. Quite a few people were displeased with the following elaborative report, whose conclusion is as follows.

openSUSE 11.0 is a difficult system to qualify. Highlights include good availability of current packages and YAST GUI configuration tools for some advanced features. However, these advantages are largely eclipsed by a chaotic, dysfunctional package management system and marginal performance. New Linux users with more complex network configurations or challenging hardware may be forced to use openSUSE due to its unique innovations in GUI system configuration. Yet, experienced and inexperienced users alike may find themselves increasingly frustrated by the grave lack of refinement in what is an otherwise capable Linux distribution.

Here is another interesting take from Steve Carl (BMC).

As usual, I have to ask the question, is OpenSUSE 11 a viable desktop for an enterprise. Not for geeks like me but for the average computer user that does not want to know anything about the computer itself: they just want a tool to get a job done.

The desktop itself is easy to use, easy to configure, easy to update, and a strong preview of what is to come in the next release of SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop). It has all sorts of standard Open Support, from Wikis to mailing lists to online doc.

There are still those who suggest that Ubuntu, for example, is an inch ahead.

In my own choice of categories and tests, and in my own judgment alone, Ubuntu 8.04 has beaten openSUSE 11 but only by a very slim margin. It only shows that openSUSE is worthy to be called the second most popular Linux distribution at the moment, and Ubuntu is still the cream of the crop.

Admittedly, it’s very user- and PC-dependent, but the reviewers in this case are experienced ones and their PCs are definitely not Linux-hostile.

Technical Assessment

We gave some examples of technical deficiencies a few days ago. There are some more minor peeves, which probably ought to be seen as bug reports. Here is one about suspend to RAM.

In my notebook computer, HP Compaq NX7300, the “suspend to RAM” functionality had worked without any problem in OpenSUSE 10.3, with kernel 2.6.22.5-31. However, it suddenly did not work after an upgrade to OpenSUSE 11, with kernel 2.6.25.5-1.1. I became nervous, tried to find out the solution, and fount out: downgrading kernel to 2.6.22.5-31.

This one is about Beagle-ReiserFS incompatibility. The former is Mono and the latter is better off forgotten.

I installed OpenSuse 11.0 today. Beware that if you install using reiserfs andl KDE your computer will freeze periodically in KDE. It took me 6 hours of debugging to figure out that beagle was causing the problems.

We apologise for being hard on OpenSUSE, but it’s clear that Novell continues to use OpenSUSE as a ‘free sample’ to lure users in to its Microsoft-taxed distribution. It’s also a case of free labour.

As a side note, I received my new PC just a few hours ago. Without going into specifics, the plan is to multi-boot it, with a 64-bit distribution that’s already installed and probably Mandriva 2008, which I’ve just downloaded. All the setups (e.g. need to buy another monitor tomorrow morning) are likely to affect activity on this site for a few more days. Summertime is a good time for readjustment. █

Release Announcements

Desktop Linux: OpenSUSE 11.0 arrives

The OpenSUSE Project has achieved a new release of its free desktop and server distribution. OpenSUSE 11.0 features a redesigned installer, KDE 4.0, GNOME 2.2.2, and the flashy Compiz Fusion 3D window manager, and over 200 new features.

Linux Insider: OpenSuse Rolls Out Feature-Packed Version 11.0

The OpenSuse project serves as a foundation for other Novell developments. The company is planning to use the open source system to create future Linux products.

Life Hacker: OpenSUSE 11.0 Integrates Compiz into Linux Desktop

OpenSuse 11.0, the latest release of the Novell/AMD-sponsored Linux distribution, has hit the download servers.

GCN: New 11.0 openSuSE Linux OS released

Version 11.0 GM of the openSuSE Linux-based operating system has been publicly released. The open source OS, sponsored by Novell, contains “200 new features,” improved installation and packaging, plus a few options for the desktop user interface.

Heise Online: OpenSuse 11 is here

As planned, the developers of the OpenSuse Linux distribution issued Version 11 on Thursday.

Linux Insider (again): Ode to Summer With Wine and OpenSuse

The rapid-fire releases of Wine 1.0 and OpenSuse 11.0 were cause for much elation and — of course — discussion within the FOSS community. Linux lovers were pleased that Wine finally is seeing the light of day after 15 years in development, though some wondered whether it’s too late to do any good.

Timothy Prickett Morgan at IT Jungle: openSUSE 11.0 Out the Door and On the Street

If you want to get a sneak peek at some of the features that will eventually be delivered as part of Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 variants for servers and PCs, you can now get it from the openSUSE project, the development effort that creates the code that eventually makes its way into the commercialized SLES and SLED releases. That’s because openSUSE 11.0 is now available.

Francis Giannaros at KDE’s Dot: openSUSE 11.0 Released with KDE 4.0.4

While KDE 4.1 did not manage to make it into openSUSE 11.0, its packages will be available via 1-click-install in the openSUSE Build Service. You can track KDE4′s development by using the regularly updated KDE 4 snapshot packages. The openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD will be based on openSUSE 11.0 in future releases.

There are some more short ones from CNET, Linux Journal, TechSpot, and from other places that apparently just tweaked the press release. You can find this press release even in LinuxPR.

Reviews/Experiences

Linux.com (Susan Linton): Kudos to openSUSE 11.0

Overall, 11.0 is a commendable release. The developers have done an admirable job walking that fine line between stable and bleeding edge. If you like the latest software or wish for a nice usable KDE 4, then openSUSE 11.0 is for you. If you’re completely happy with 10.3, well, perhaps you might want to wait for further reports.

Ladislav appears to be an OpenSUSE user.

Distro Watch: From Fedora 9 to openSUSE 11.0

Overall, I am pleasantly surprised with openSUSE 11.0. Perhaps the only area where it lacks in comparison with Fedora 9 is its font setup; on my LCD monitor I find the default fonts looking absolutely gorgeous on all recent Fedora and Mandriva releases, but it takes a lot of experimentation and tweaking on most other distribution to get the same effect. Other than that, openSUSE 11.0 looks good and feels solid, and I expect being a satisfied openSUSE user for the next six months.

andrewpoots.wordpress.com: OpenSuse 11 – First Impressions

All in all… good solid distro so far although I think I’m probably going to leave compiz-fusion switched off on my test machine… will try it on another machine with a better graphics card to see if experience improves… I still think OpenSuse is the best linux distro out there and makes for a great free download!

crazythinking.wordpress.com: First impressions about OpenSuSE 11.0

It is really great! Very responsive, fast, beautiful.

Compiz-fusion effects are really nice to have. And the desktop feels more integrated.

allajunaki.wordpress.com: openSUSE 11

Oh, did I mention? I installed the LiveCD to the HDD, it was really simple, once the liveCD was up and running, u just need to click ‘install’ on desktop, and in 15 odd mins (on my lappy) , it made a copy of SUSE in my HDD.

skywake-andstuff.blogspot.com: openSUSE 11.0

I do know at some point I will have to open up a terminal to setup my TV tuner card and media card reader. I also know that I will probably never get my firewire port or dial-up modem to work (but who cares). Overall however I must say that this version of openSUSE is the closest thing to an out of the box OS this side of OSX.

sunnytalkstech.blogspot.com: Review: openSuSE 11.0

You can’t miss the ease of use and the sleek looks that openSuSE 11.0 brings to the desktop. Its the perfect distro for a new user coming to linux. For the old pros, openSUSE 11.0 is fast and brings in ease of administration and software installation.

reddevil62-techhead.blogspot.com: A Quick Appraisal: Xfce in OpenSUSE 11.0

From an aesthetic point of view openSUSE’s Xfce is borderline acceptable and it certainly brings the speed boost I was hoping for.
But if they’re going to offer Xfce as a login option, then openSUSE could do more to make it useable.
In its present state Xfce is very much the poor relation among openSUSE 11.0′s desktop environments.

linuxgraphics.studiofire.net: Opensuse 11 Released and First Impressions

If you’re looking to see where one of the top Linux Distros is heading, then be sure to check out openSuse 11. While it doesn’t seem to have the polish that 10.3 had, once the updates start rolling down the line, it will definately be one of the best distros out there, in my opinion.

ruminationsonthedigitalrealm.org: OpenSUSE 11.0 beats Vista, Leopard and Ubuntu hands down

Yes, this mother of all Linux distributions will be responsible for the utter demise of Microsoft, Apple and will create an immensity of spare time for all maintainers of other distributions. By all means an achievement worthy of it’s own wikipedia entry.

Disclaimer: this article was written at the speed of typing. I didn’t actually think about it. Of course, I can not be held responsible for the truthfulness of the statements.This isn’t a review, I simply wondered how much superlatives it needs to satisfy the ones who become angry at an article that more realistically describes their favorite Linux distribution. But, truly, OpenSUSE is worth a look.

ruminationsonthedigitalrealm.org (beforehand): OpenSUSE 11.0 on Acer Aspire 3681 WXMi

The second issue was getting wifi up and running. The solution was found and after following the suggestions I could go online without an ethernet cable attached to my laptop.

The issues I had with the software repositories and the ugly fonts were gone with this regular install. I could add the multimedia support almost without a problem (it had to be repeated twice to get everything).

Susan Linton also published a comparison between Mandriva and OpenSUSE:

Battle of the Titans – Mandriva vs openSUSE: The Rematch

Last fall when the two mega-distros openSUSE and Mandriva both hit the mirrors, it was difficult to decide which I liked better. In an attempt to narrow it down, I ran some light-hearted tests and found Mandriva won out in a side-by-side comparison. But things change rapidly in the Linux world and I wondered how a competition of the newest releases would come out. Mandriva 2008.1 was released this past April and openSUSE 11.0 was released just last week.

crunchbang.org: openSUSE 11, a quick look

I have not been using the system long enough to make any solid conclusions; however, from what I have experienced so far, openSUSE 11 is definitely worth a look. If I was not so attached to APT, I would maybe consider keeping it installed. Having said that, it really is not too difficult to set-up Ubuntu to mimic and take advantage of the features I like in openSUSE.

It has come to the stage now where not so many OpenSUSE 11.0 reviews are published. Surely, however, there will be many more next week. █

fter this previous post, and over at the IRC channel, I promised AlbertoP some more specific details. He asked for a better supported set of complaints that show the weaknesses of OpenSUSE 11.0. So here is just a quick rundown.

Too much like Vista, says Techie Moe in his short review.

OpenSuSE 11: Channeling Vista

If SuSE is actively trying to make Vista converts feel comfortable (at the expense of everyone else), they’re catering to a different demographic than me. When that sort of thing happens, I look elsewhere.

Visual gripes aside I had a solid experience with OpenSuSE 11, when I installed it from the DVD. It’s not quite something I’d pay $60USD for, but it would let me do what I needed on Rig 2 in a pinch.

Bruce on the lack on focus:

OpenSUSE 11: A Feature-Rich Distro in Search of Direction

Some members of the free software community will reject openSUSE out of hand, remembering the Microsoft-Novell pact in November 2006, and damning openSUSE along with its patron Novell. That is understandable if not entirely fair.

However, thinking only on the technical side, a better reason to have reservations about openSUSE is its lack of focus. These days, major distributions are known for a particular focus — for example, Ubuntu for user-friendliness, Fedora for the latest innovations, and Debian for stability and software freedom. By contrast, like the distributions of a decade ago, is still trying to be everything to everybody.

This guy too reckons it’s for power users:

openSUSE 11.0 x86_64 Review

I have finished setting up openSUSE 11.0 on my HP dv2000z AMD Turion64 X2. Up to version 10.3 I was running the 32-bit version of SUSE and decided now was a good time to do a ‘New’ install and give x86_64 a spin.

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I’ve covered the basics for getting openSUSE 11.0 x86_64 installed. So far, I have had only a few minor ‘nuisance’ issues described above and feel that the openSUSE Development Team have done a great job of putting together another winner. YaST is even easier to use combined with ‘one-click’ installations that puts it on the same level of ease of use with Ubuntu’s Synaptic GUI. At the same time openSUSE is a power-user’s Linux.

Beranger takes things apart, as one just ought to expect.

40 minutes with KDE4 under openSUSE 11.0

I was initially impressed by what I thought it was minutiae in Bruce’s report, but this ended shortly after I noticed he mixed old and new impressions as if everything was hot stuff. The babbling about the EULA is certainly BS: «By accepting the license, you agree not to distribute copies for profit or bundled with anything else, and also not to reverse engineer or transfer rights. The rationale is probably that the license refers to the distribution as a whole, but, all the same, it seems at odds with the free licenses of the individual applications — especially any version of the GNU General Public License — so you might want to consult a lawyer before using openSUSE commercially.»

Fiddling phobia:

openSuSE 11.0 – A Closer Look

So, to summarize at this point, I am considerably happier with openSuSE 11.0 than i was after first installing it. However, I still think that it is much more complex, and requires a lot more fiddling and tuning from the user, than Ubuntu 8.04. If I were setting up a system for someone else, I would certainly install Ubuntu. But if I were setting up a system for myself, I would seriously consider openSuSE, and I will have to do some more investigation before making a final decision.

Audio issues:

Resolving openSUSE 11.0 Sound Issue With Some Audigy Cards

In the last few days I managed to install openSUSE 11.0 on more than 6 desktops, helping my friends on setting up the distribution, and on one of them I encountered a strange problem, running KDE 4.0. The problem occurred with the Audigy 2 ZS card, same as the one I have. From forums I noticed that I was not the only one to get this strange hiccup. As it seems, this small problem lies within the KMix settings.

Achieve Zen with openSUSE 11.0 (i.e Get rid of pulse audio)

I’ve been having a lot of stability issues with openSUSE 11.0 lately and the majority of them boiled down to audio.

Jan shared some pet peeve which is to do with package management.

OpenSUSE – searching for programs and packages

Looking for software that isn’t there is a nuisance, though you can’t expect the repositories to contain everything you like. What really got on my nerve was the menu panel. I switch from app to app and to click on Computer, then on More programs and then have to wait in order to see the list and then find the application is cumbersome and requires more mouse clicks than I want. Okay, I didn’t dump it immediately. I added a new panel and a menubar.

Moosy’s speed comparison (on fat and bloat):

Ubuntu faster then openSUSE?

So, my conclusion. If you change the openSUSE 11.0 menu to the traditional GNOME menu and disable some of the need features of openSUSE it feels very very similar.

The impact of including an early version of KDE4?

Staying with openSUSE – Switching to GNOME

I started using Linux at the suggestion of a friend, around the time of RedHat 7.1, and that friend told me to install KDE because it was better than GNOME, and I did.

The disconnect that newbies would find daunting:

Installed OpenSuse 11.0

First, the installer misdetected my monitor resolution, then i told him the good one, but that ended up in a messed xorg.conf that applied zoom onto the desktop, i had the remove the Option “PreferredMode” line from the file.

No match for Ubuntu yet:

openSUSE 11 installation this weekend

In summary: a great effort, lots of neat features. I’m not sure it would replace my hardy heron laptop yet. Looking forward to 11.1.

Minor complaint:

openSUSE 11.0

In the future, I would appreciate that developers focus on the individual applications and drivers, to reach a very high level of desktop functionality.

This is not intended to demoralise. It’s mostly specific and instructive. █

Take it from the man, Steven Vaughan, whose conclusion is that Dell’s laptops with GNU/Linux preloaded may be a better deal to many who consider SUSE on Lenovo Thinkpads.

But then Ohlhorst found some flies in the soup. First, one of the boot options was to bring SLED up with the Xen virtualization program. Whoops. It didn’t work.

I’m not sure what Lenovo thought it was doing by making that a boot option, anyway. I mean, if you want to use virtualization, you’re going to need to get in there and install another operating system and set its system settings first. Why not leave setting up Xen until it’s time to set up Xen, or, as I’d be more likely to do, install and set up VirtualBox?

Steven and Frank did not bash SUSE. They made an observation and the fault might be with Lenovo, not Novell. █

To those who are here only for information about Novell — we apologise. It is important to understand, however, that Microsoft's deal with Novell has a lot to do with OOXML and the remainder of the proprietary stack which is attached to it. Those issues are inseparable and they need to be understood in context.

We turn our attention to Australia and New Zealand where a few things are being reported. In New Zealand, the readability of OOXML raises concerns. Structure is not self-explanatory. It is made cryptic and shortened for performance gains (shades of binary formats for efficiency).

“This DIS contradicts the goals of XML and best practices. The designers of XML knew what they were doing because while we can remember what “c” means in this case it becomes problematic when we get hundreds or thousands of these shorthand references. …. OOXML has hundreds of these cryptic names.”

Later on you’ll find Microsoft bragging about superior performance (in terms of efficiency) in OOXML, as it already did before to discredit ODF (in OpenOffice.org). Well, XML has little or no value if its semantics (structure) is only ‘robot-readable’. Yes, binary dumps are also fast and maybe even fastest, but it all comes at a cost. The same goes for closed-source programs whose source code is messy. Watch this short article from last month:

Seriously, how many people are there in the world who are going to go “Hmmm, error code 8024402F … ahhh yes, I know what the problem is”? I can’t, and I’ve been neck deep in the Microsoft ecosystem for what is getting to be almost two decades.

This relates quite nicely to the discussion at hand. OOXML is very ad hoc and it is not suitable to become a standard like ODF, let alone (X)HTML or L^AT_EX.

Here is a recent report about the advisory group in New Zealand:

In September 2007, the European Computer Manufacturers’ Association (ECMA) 376 Open Office XML specification was not approved as an international standard when voted on by members of the international standards joint technical committee No 1 (JTC1). Standards New Zealand, as a member of JTC1 with the responsibility to vote on behalf of New Zealand, voted against adopting the specification as an international standard.

The situation in Austrlia sounds very reasonable, with the exception of characters like Rick Jelliffe, who gets free trips and money for Wikipedia edits that support Microsoft. It’s a strategic thing with a long history. █

The scale of companies plays a role as well. While long-term sustainability is an important factor, some people refuse to trust companies which project vanity and/or take control of a distribution’s direction (e.g. community- versus customer-driven). Compiz is a fine example of this.

Novell is clearly listening. In fact, it has just kicked off a survey for openSUSE users. But what happens when those who contribute to openSUSE (as I used to do) feel as though they were backstabbed and also portrayed negatively? It’s a blame game which involves OpenSUSE developers/testers/assistants/documentation volunteers, some of whom frown upon actions taken by the management of Novell.

While we don’t take pleasure in seeing Opensuse sinking in reviews while Ubuntu trumps many of its rivals, it does make you think. Ubuntu becomes the codebase of many other Linux distributions. Here is yet another reminder that Opensuse needs to get its act together fast. It is no longer the distribution of choice, which is a status it could probably boast a couple of years ago.

(K)Ubuntu to OpenSuSe – My Experience

Installing softwares. YAST is not easy to use if you are used to apt-get or synaptic. With Ubuntu, you’ll have the basic repos
added and you can just uncomment other repos in the sources.list file if you want to use them. When I opened the list in YAST, there was nothing there.