It has been a while since the purpose of these weekly posts was last explained. Just as a reminder (to new readers maybe), this is an accumulation of positive Novell news from the past week. It's inteded to show that we don't turn a blind eye to Novell's achievements. Rather, we are aware of them; but taking all into account, we still call for a Novell boycott. The harms Novell brings outweigh the benfits it brings to GNU/Linux. The Do-no-evil tag was originally put there because it these posts were intended to show that we are not evil. We can offer Novell some praises when these are deserved and justified.

Without further ado, here's a digest for the past week.

OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE has reached the release candidate milestone.

Technical Changes

• libzypp 3.24
• Virtualbox 1.5
• OpenOffice.org 2.3
• Countless bug fixes in every component: 535 bugs RESOLVED/FIXED
• 485 packages submitted

The newly-released GNOME desktop will apparently be merged into this upcoming version of OpenSUSE.

Among other things, openSUSE 10.3 is set to contain, and be among the very first to have, the new GNOME 2.20.

A long-time Linux seeker, who could not quite the perfect distribution (Gentoo was his kryptonite, he argued), appears to have settled down with Madame Susie.

Last night was install night, and I'll tell you this. OpenSUSE was a dream come true in this uncertain time. After the install I had DNS and DHCP up and running in about 10 minutes, if that! Configuration was a snap! I would even venture to say that DNS and DHCP setup on OpenSUSE is 1000 times easier and more intuitive than Windows!

Here is another positive experience.

After sticking with OpenSuSE for a long time (read 2 years), I finally got one of the bleeding edge distros : Arch Linux.

[...]

Apart from all this, I would still say that OpenSuSE rocks. For someone new to linux and OSS, I would definitely recommend OpenSuSE.

Linux Business

Novell has a finally gotten around to deployment of thousands of Linux desktops in a South African bank.

The Linux desktop rollout will replace the Legacy OS/2 operating system, as well as approximately 4 000 Windows 2000 installations.

From ELCOT, which caught quite a few people's attention because of its Linux migration (SUSE), there's even more coming. Students receive a 40% discounts on SUSE laptop. This seems like an incentives program.

We have evaluated the products and assessed their Windows and Linux compatibility.

The laptop which the article talks about is said to be this one.

The military research recently made SUSE its choice for the cluster.

Running on industry standard SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server 10 fro Novell(R), the new system also features 28TB of RAID storage in two SGI InfiniteStorage 220 direct attached systems for data consolidation.

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Running on industry standard SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server 10 fro Novell(R), the new system also features 28TB of RAID storage in two SGI InfiniteStorage 220 direct attached systems for data consolidation.

CRN has an article on Linux growth and it attributes a thing or two to Novell.

One of the keys to Novacoast's success has also been a tight partnership with Novell, which has relied on Novacoast as part of the vendor's partner bench program. That Novell initiative tags key partners as go to players for subcontracting services. "We get used by Novell for our tactical ability to close deals quickly and upsell customers," said Gray. "We are really good at taking a deal that is stuck and getting it closed."

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Rob Hart, the business development director for Data Technique, an Overland Park, Kansas solution provider, also attributed his company's fast growth to identity management, and a tight partnership with Novell. Data Technique's sales have shot up from $1 million three years ago to $4.5 million.

Documents and Management

Michael Meeks, whom we now know as somewhat of a friend of OOXML, gets this mention.

OpenOffice.org’s annual conference kicks off this week in Barcelona. As a big supporter of OpenOffice.org - we’re the second largest contributor to OpenOffice.org after Sun - Novell will be there in full force. We’re a Premium sponsor, and Michael Meeks, Novell’s OpenOffice.org lead and a significant code contributor to OpenOffice.org, will attend, as will Guy Lunardi, one of Novell’s top desktop guys, and Alan Clark, who heads up our standardization efforts.

DocuWare gets a mention here.

Customers working with Novell Netware can administer users and user groups in Novell eDirectory and import them automatically via LDAP into DocuWare 5.1. Users profit from the synchronization since manual intervention is unnecessary. DocuWare has been a Novell Silver Partner in the Novell Partner Network since March 2007.

There is also this new press release.

Novell today announced the upcoming availability of Novell(R) Teaming and Novell Teaming + Conferencing, two new team workspace and real-time collaboration additions to Novell's workgroup product line. These solutions will help boost end-user and team productivity and reduce overall customer costs by improving the everyday business processes people engage in to create, share, discuss and manage information. They also support a new model for technical and business innovation Novell calls "open collaboration," which describes the open source technology development process that allows customers and partners to participate in product innovation, the actual tools that allow for customer choice, and a way of working to increase team effectiveness and organizational success.

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Novell Teaming + Conferencing will immediately integrate with many features of Novell GroupWise(R) and the Novell Open Workgroup Suite, with additional integration to follow in subsequent releases. With these open collaboration solutions, teams communicate more effectively and will be more productive on the platform and client of their choice, whether Linux or Windows.

Infocard gets a quick mention in Between the Lines.

The Bandit Project (sponsored by Novell) has released DigitalMe for the Mac. DigitalMe is the Novell brand for their Infocard selectors that are compatible with Microsoft’s CardSpace.

Novell's PR blog is one among several sites that talk about the latest identity management news from Novell.

Proving that the need for centralized and automated user provisioning knows no borders, Novell Identity Manager continues to be deployed in venues far and wide. Recent successful customer deployments include APACS in the United Kingdom, University of Cape Town in South Africa and University of Adelaine in Australia.

APACS has implemented Identity Manager to synchronize user information and group membership across three core systems. University of Adelaide is using Identity Manager to synchronizes identities and passwords across several directories. University of Cape Town has deployed Identity Manager to enable automatic role-based provisioning of user accounts and physical access rights for its large and fast-changing user community.

Stay tuned to find out where in the world, Identity Manager will be deployed next

There was a bit more in a previous writeup.

Lastly, Novell is getting a some lip service from IdentiPHI.

Many Novell customers rely on server-side computing and remote administration which requires the same biometric authentication capabilities. SAFmodule(TM) can be configured to include SAFremote Authenticator(TM), an add-on product to SAFmodule that enables strong authentication over Citrix€® MetaFrame, Windows€® Terminal Services and XP Remote Desktop sessions.