05.02.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Novell News Summary – Part II: SLED at H-P, SLES at IBM, and Xandros/Scalix
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. █
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