04.04.09

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Novell News Summary – Part II: SUSE Post SLE11 Release, Open Cloud Revisited

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Marketing, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Servers, SLES/SLED at 7:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: SUSE news accumulated over the past week

Novell’s CMO John Dragoon published this article in Forbes, so his subordinates promoted it in Novell’s PR blog and his personal professional blog too. It was about “open source”. Also mentioned in Tectonic was Novell’s IDG ‘study’ that we last mentioned in this post.

SUSE (SLES/SLED) 11

The timing of this IDG ‘study’ (manufactured evidence as Microsoft views it) is probably related to the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server/Desktop 11, which is still being reviewed.

The much anticipated Suse Linux Enterprise desktop is finally Out. I worked on Beta and it was not what i expected from Novell lets check weather the final release gives us the same expiernece or not. For my evaluation of SLED 11, I used Dell Latitude D630 with 3GB of RAM and nvidia 8400gs graphic card.

At first look, Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) is exactly same like openSUSE 11.1. But does SLED 11 have the extra polish and the value add to justify its position as Novell’s premier enterprisedesktop OS? We need to figure that out.

There is a lot more such coverage right here and here are some late articles which speak about this release too. These include:

Trilogy Solutions is the latest among those who piggyback Novell’s release using their own press release, whose summary in this case is:

Trilogy Solutions, LLC, today achieves Gold Linux Specialist Status from Novell and expands its support and focus for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell, the Linux platform that drives mission-critical computing from the desktop to the data center, for physical and virtual environments.

Susan Linton (of TuxMachines fame) did a visual review of SLED 11, which she published over at Linux Magazine.

Take a screenshot tour of Novell’s latest release of SLED. Get the scoop on what’s new and what works (and what doesn’t).

IDG set up a reference page for SLED 11 and Rodney Gedda, a SUSE/SLED user, reviewed it on behalf of IDG. Here are his conclusions:

All up, Novell with SLED 11 has made a good thing even better and we recommend you give it a run.

Time will tell whether the commercial ISVs can further validate the platform with more applications – a key factor in getting the Linux desktop in business.

Jason Brooks, who has already reviewed this product, pondered the possibility of more collaboration that would involve Novell too.

I’d love to see Novell and Red Hat figure out a way to work with the Debian project to reuse the packaging efforts that its members are making to broaden the range of software packages available for easy installation. It would take some work to translate the Debian packaging efforts to work with Novell’s and Red Hat’s RPM-based distributions, but Novell already has Build Service, a project under way that is capable of building packages for SUSE-, Red Hat- and Ubuntu-based distributions.

Novell’s PR department used Conficker to push SLED to the masses and the SUSE-sympathetic Heise Online gave some PR boost to Novell’s boosting of Microsoft software, notably .NET.

The ASP.NET stack in Mono can now run pre-compiled ASP.NET web sites that are generated with the aspnet_compiler or Visual Studio. Mono can then support ASP.NET applications written in languages other than C#, or applications that take advantage of updated VB.NET features that are not available on Mono’s VB compiler. Several improvements to the DataGridView control have also been made to better support DataBinding. More details about the Mono release can be found in the 2.4 release notes.

No week would be complete without the mentioning of Novell’s help to Microsoft, namely, in this case:

As part of that activity, Microsoft and Novell Inc. have partnered to help software developers create and deliver accessible products for Windows and Linux platforms. Sinclair says the project will dramatically improve computer access to the next generation of software applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are blind.

Microsoft pledges not to assert any patents necessary to implement its UIA specification, regardless of platform, in the open source and proprietary software communities. Novell’s compatibility efforts also will be open source and will make the UIA framework cross-platform.

The ‘Microsoft press’ wrote some more about Novell and Microsoft:

David, you bring up a lot of good questions that we obviously can’t answer, but we will say that our impression is that Novell’s revamped partner strategy is very much a work in progress. And while we don’t spend a lot of time writing about Novell — RCPU is a Microsoft-focused newsletter, after all, at least in theory — we’ll bring this up next time your editor talks to his neighbors in Waltham, Mass. Or perhaps somebody from Novell will read this entry and respond. We’ll see. But as with any undertaking that’s really just getting started, a little patience might be in order, although we understand that you need a lot more than patience right now.

On the other hand, to be fair to SUSE, there are also some good contributions to the kernel, as noted here:

The companies that helped out in this latest release, as most of them have in previous ones, include IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, and Red Hat.

One of Novell’s better-known Linux programmers is Greg Kroah-Hartman, whom Heise mentioned in this article about Linux 2.6.30 development.

Wang Chen has expanded his Linux Kernel Patch Statistic website to include the results for Linux 2.6.29. Just as in the LWN.net article entitled “Where 2.6.29 came from”, which became freely available yesterday, Novell (or rather, Novell employee Greg Kroah-Hartman) fares decidedly better here than in previous reports – this is mainly due to the staging area, which was integrated into the main development branch 2.6.28 and is maintained by Greg Kroah-Hartman. This area contains a multitude of drivers and other code which is not yet up to the standards required by the kernel developers.

The bogus controversy from Microsoft over an "Open Cloud" manifesto is not exactly over. Novell, unlike Microsoft, is a member of “Open Cloud” and Novell’s participation is explicitly mentioned in:

Novell is also a member of this group which covers security and it’s right there among AMQP members.

Another organization recently launched to address the security challenges associated with cloud computing and support the market growth of the technology. Called the Open Cloud Manifesto, the organization lists security, data and application interoperability and portability, management and governance, and metering and monitoring as some of the areas that need to be addressed by the industry. It counts EMC Corp., IBM Internet Security Systems, Novell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. among its backers.

In addition to Solace, the AMQP Working Group today includes Cisco Systems (CSCO), Credit Suisse (CS), Deutsche Börse Systems, Envoy Technologies, Goldman Sachs (GS), iMatix Corporation, IONA Technologies (PRGS), JPMorgan Chase Bank & Co. (JPM), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), Novell (NOVL) , Rabbit Technologies, Red Hat (RHT), Tervela, TWIST Process Innovations, WSO2 and 29West. The complete AMQP specification can be found at http://jira.amqp.org/confluence/display/AMQP/Download

Next, we shall look at the remainder of Novell’s news that may not be related to SUSE. █

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A Single Comment

André said,

April 4, 2009 at 8:45 am

From my experience with these kind of texts there is one phrase which contains the essence of the Novell lobby message:

“Don’t mandate open source. Open source isn’t the solution for every problem and should compete on its own merits with proprietary solutions. Don’t follow the lead of foreign governments–mandates are counterproductive.”

Of course there is a call for preferential treatment of open source. So someone should campaign for that. From an economist’s perspective what he tells is plain nonsense. When I can get source code disclosed that is obviously more for me than when I don’t get it. Now, the vendor tells me, you don’t really want to get the source. Maybe he is right but disclosure and transparency does not harm me in any way. I also can’t see that open source software is more expensive.

As a personal training session take the phrase above and frame it. Meditate 5 minutes per day what is wrong about it. That will give an impression how you can easily crumble them.

“While the U.S. has lagged behind other countries in open-source software adoption, the economic crisis will change that.”

That tells all how they see the world. Let’s make their nightmare happen. Just for fun.