Novell News Summary - Part II: SUSE (SLES/SLED), Novell's in Red Hat's Shadow, and Xandros
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2009-06-27 14:47:33 UTC
Modified: 2009-06-27 14:48:17 UTC
Summary: A few bits and pieces about SLES, SLED, Novell's performance, Xandros and Scalix
THERE WAS almost nothing about SLES and SLED in the past week's news. Here is just a boring Novell attraction which was uploaded to YouTube some days ago, having been captured in Computex not so long ago.
It is safe to assume that bigger Power-based CloudBurst iron will get bigger SAN disks behind it, and that the PowerVM hypervisor and the Virtual I/O Server will play big roles in the Power-based CloudBurst setups. And IBM has to support its own i 6.1 and AIX 6.1 operating system as well as Red Hat and Novell Linuxes on the power iron, too.
There are some smaller mainframes running IBM's z/OS, VSE, or VM operating systems, Unisys sells some relatively small MCP and OS2200 mainframes, and there's still NetWare of a sort from Novell that you might consider proprietary (it is basically NetWare services running atop Linux at this point). Bull even has an emulation layer that allows GCOS 7 and GCOS 8 applications to run on its Itanium-based Novascale systems running Linux.
The Mini 5101 will still weigh about 2.6 pounds, and buyers will have their pick of Windows Vista, XP Home or Professional, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, or FreeDOS—if they want to install their own version of Linux.
Low-cost, energy-efficient Userful Multiplier desktops running on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop have transformed the way SASSA officials capture and process social grant applications in rural South Africa.
Novell and Red Hat are routinely mentioned as the only front runners of GNU/Linux and here is a new example.
Running your favorite flavor of the Linux operating system, such as Red Hat's (NYSE: RHT) Fedora or Novell's (Nasdaq: NOVL) SuSE Linux, a SheevaPlug system simply plugs in to a power outlet and an Ethernet cable, with optional USB accessories like external hard drives.
In light of the strong results from Red Hat, we also found Novell mentioned as the company in Red Hat's shadow. For example:
When Red Hat announced first quarter results on June 24, The VAR Guy spotted a rather interesting detail: Red Hat’s quarterly open source revenues are nearly four times larger than its closest Linux rival, Novell.
[...]
Meanwhile, Novell’s legacy business continues to shrink but newer businesses like SUSE Linux, identity management, security and data center administration offer promising growth. But here’s the problem: Those individual Novell products don’t always create pull for one another, The VAR Guy believes.
With profit and revenue up, Red Hat continues to impress, especially as it's not dependent on a competitor for its revenue, which remains the Achilles' heel in Novell's otherwise bright earnings reports.
However, Novell (NasdaqGS:NOVL - News) is another profit-minded open source software company that's been coming on stronger lately, says Aaron Schwartz of Ladenburg Thalmann. Such progress is due in part to the firm's partnership with Microsoft (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News).
The damage done to Novell's reputation is unmeasurable though. And another last one:
If you’re not familiar with Red Hat, it’s the world’s biggest provider of Linux software. It also sells maintenance contracts which includes upgrades, help-desk support and bug fixes. Rivals include Novell and Microsoft.
Dana Russell, senior vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Novell, said his company would be interested in making acquisition in the high-growth businesses like identity security and compliance management software, data centre tools and open source software.
A number of Linux software makers have already jumped on board with Moblin. Around 15 companies showed off their own versions of Moblin early this month at the Computex Taipei 2009 computer show, including Novell with its SUSE Moblin, as well as Red Flag, Xandros, Linpus and Wind River Systems, which has agreed to be bought by Intel.
In continuing the series on Asus Netbooks, I'd like to consider whether Asus can make their product more mainstream, especially as it pertains to U.S. markets.
[...]
1)The default distribution of Linux on the Asus models (Xandros) is clunky and not the best choice. For example, it's difficult to connect to Wi-Fi using WPA in Xandros. I don't know of too many people who have WEP security. Instead, Asus should consider using a Linux version like Unbuntu on it's systems.
Fortunately, help is at hand with Xandros Presto. This instant-on OS installs directly from Windows and offers many of the features as its hardware-embedded competition. In timed tests, Windows Vista took almost two minutes to boot, whereas Presto took a miraculous 20 seconds.
There is also some minor news about Scalix, which is part of Xandros.
Scalix Announces Beta Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server
[...]
1)The default distribution of Linux on the Asus models (Xandros) is clunky and not the best choice. For example, it's difficult to connect to Wi-Fi using WPA in Xandros. I don't know of too many people who have WEP security. Instead, Asus should consider using a Linux version like Unbuntu on it's systems.
Quiet week overall. Light in terms of actual changes. ⬆
they say there's no free lunch; if you aren't paying for hosting and serving of "your" videos, you're not the customer and those videos, once uploaded, aren't quite yours anymore
This past summer Richard M. Stallman (RMS) openly complained in a public event that the term "security" had come to mean all sorts of ridiculous things, including the very oppose of real security
In the long run, this site and its sister site (less overlap between them now) should hopefully become a popular destination for people who look for information, not chaff