Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part II: GeekoBuilder and Novell's Imaginary Open-Source Apps Store

Chameleon on branch



Summary: News about SUSE

There is nothing significant to see here this time around, but SUSE was mentioned in some places, mostly indirectly. Heise, for example, mentioned SUSE/Novell in this short roundup



Support for Moblin, the Linux distribution designed for mobile devices originally based on the Intel Atom processor, is growing. At Computex this week both Xandros and Novell announced they plan to support the mobile operating system. Canonical have also confirmed plans for an Ubuntu / Moblin remix.


A little more about Novell and sub-notebooks (even if it refers to OpenSUSE):

Intel has enjoyed recent success with the Atom chip, which helped products like the Netbook. The company has partnered with Novell on mobile operating systems, hoping to break into smartphones. Intel microprocessors are not yet in the iPhone (AAPL) or Palm (PALM) Pre, but Intel hopes to win them over in time.


Marketing



This was perhaps the more exceptional part. Novell seems to have decided that for fun and publicity it would be useful to promote the Geeko mascot.

Perhaps you have allergies or maybe you live in a small apartment, and so you’ve lived without the companionship of an animal friend. Well, no matter what your circumstances now you can have your own virtual pet Geeko.


Some OpenSUSE folks present what they got. Here is Gabriel Stein, Zonker and others. There is even a well-made video about this over at YouTube.



TuxMachines mentioned it and Heise did an entire article.

The Novell community has responded to the demand of its users for a personalised SUSE mascot builder by publishing GeekoBuilder.com.


It's mostly a publicity tool/stunt and Novell is mentioned among companies in this page on unethical marketing training/gig. Its PR people are trying to harness social networks too.

That’s right, Novell has a presence on Facebook that gives friends and fans the latest information for SUSE Linux Enterprise, GroupWise and ZENworks as well as Novell in general.


Shop



The big news, aside from GeekoBuilder, is probably the rumour about a Novell-centered applications store. It all seems to have all begun here, along with a lift from Slashdot.

Novell plans to bring the wealth of open-source software to everyday users through an "open-source apps store".

The vast amount of free software available to open-source users has long been one of the major benefits of switching to a Linux distro such as Ubuntu, or openSUSE. The problem has always been in explaining this to customers reared on a Windows diet.


This was also mentioned in The Register:

Novell is considering making a one-click "open-source app store" for its upcoming Moblin-based OS for netbooks. The scheme is intended as a selling point for average users largely unfamiliar with free software alternatives outside a Microsoft platform.

According to PC Pro, Novell believes baking an open-source software repository into the SUSE edition of Moblin will help sway more netbook users to uncheck the Windows option when buying their small, cheap computer.


Matt Asay rightly compares to this RHX.

In fact, we have several. Google Code, SourceForge, Code Haus, and other open-source code repositories already freely provide open-source applications. Beyond this, Red Hat tried to do a one-click installation experience with Red Hat Exchange (RHX) back in 2007. It didn't work as planned.


Another skeptic is his colleague Dave Rosenberg, who writes:

Novell believes that an open-source apps store would make life easier for customers, specifically those interested in Netbooks. This certainly seems logical, but considering that open-source applications tend be licensed in a way that doesn't require an upfront fee, it's hard to see how this represents a business model.


Glyn Moody is also a skeptic because of Synaptic.

Er, haven't we had an "apps store for GNU/Linux" for ages? Things like Synaptic and KPackage? Do we really need anything more?


Novell's PR people tried to clarify the company's intent because this story had spread to all sorts of publications even in Europe.

A reader wrote to us about this, claiming that "SourceForge might be under low-burn attack. Remember the acquisition of one company infested with Microsoft staff? Now Microsoft/Suse is doing a "me, too" on software. MS/Novell's Saturate, diffuse and confuse can be countered with the real information."

Out reader recommends the various Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora repositories as well as to SourceForge and Savannah:

http://sourceforge.net/ http://packages.debian.org/lenny/ http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/ https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/collections/id/21

Novell/SUSE Miscellany



Some other new articles that mentioned SUSE (or SUSE-based products) are:

i. Germans fire up 200 teraflop Juropa2 super

Another 14 Sun storage servers are running a Lustre clustered file system that currently has 500 TB of capacity. While Sun didn't say this, it is inconceivable that the Juropa2 cluster does not run Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.


ii. Motally to deliver reliable mobile analytics

Motally claims to have solved this problem and others like it by using its own servers to measure mobile traffic. And with talent drawn from Yahoo Mobile, IBM, Novell, Oracle and Helio, it seems to be on the right track.


iii. What's the Future for OpenSolaris?

Having a development platform and a commercial product is in itself not unusual: In the Red Hat world there's the commercially supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the unsupported, community developed Fedora, while Novell offers SuSe Linux Enterprise Edition as well as providing support for the OpenSUSE development project.

But these are commercially driven open source OS companies: RHEL and SLES are key parts of Red Hat's and Novell's businesses, respectively. Oracle isn't and will not be a company driven solely by the need to make money from operating systems, so why should it follow the Red Hat/Novell model of using an open source project to feed in to its enterprise OS?


iv. Centralized monitoring of all Novell OES platforms

AdRem Software, Inc., a leading provider of network management and monitoring solutions, introduced a new version of AdRem Server Manager 7 for Novell OES server monitoring and maintenance, both OES Linux and NetWare platforms.


That's about it for now. Not much of significance.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete