Really bizarre Novell Web page (real screenshot)

Summary: News about OpenSUSE, SLE*, and a little update from Linspire

OpenSUSE

TWO weeks ago we saw the formation of the OpenSUSE Boosting Team. They sure have a good sense of humour:

[...]

Busily,

The Propaganda Minister

Looking at coming events, Zonker will attend the Linux Fest in Ontario, Canada. OpenSUSE will also have presence at Encuentro Linux 2009.

Yes, I am going to Encuentro Linux 2009, and so does openSUSE!.

OpenSUSE 11.2 is almost ready to roll now and it will come with the excellent KDE 4.3.2 as the default desktop environment.

The 4.3.2 release of KDE came too late to be included in openSUSE 11.2. As the distribution release gets closer, there is a certain point after which only reviewed changes should be allowed in, in order to reduce the possibility of these changes causing unexpected breakages that might go unnoticed within the relatively short time until the release. This can happen and it wouldn't be very good to fix something small and break something bigger for the release because of some unnoticed mistake. So openSUSE 11.2 will not officially include KDE 4.3.2.

To say more about the looming launch:

There is a lot of buzz in the tech media world about the upcoming Ubuntu Karmic Koala release, but it's not the only Linux release on its way from a major vendor. Novell's (NASDAQ: NOVL) community-driven openSUSE project is nearing completion of its next major release, version 11.2

The first release candidate for openSUSE 11.2 was released this week and includes the latest Linux 2.6.31.3 kernel, social networking support and the inclusion of the GNOME 2.28 desktop, among other new features. While both the latest GNOME and KDE desktops are part of the openSUSE 11.2 release, the KDE desktop will now become the default choice for desktop GUI instead of GNOME. The move to make KDE the default choice is not seen by openSUSE as a shift, but rather a choice for users.

On the technical side, Andreas Jaeger weighed in on packaging contributions and Pascal wrote about OpenSUSE Build Service.

We are currently switching from OBS (openSUSE Build Service) version 1.6.0 to the latest SVN trunk HEAD, which requires some experimentation and also caused a complete rebuild (for unknown reasons).

Here is an analysis of how free (as in Freedom) OpenSUSE Build Service really is.

Aaron Seigo, one of my favourite blogger, recently wrote a text titled freedom services where he highlighted aspects of freedom of online services. Aaron found four bullet points which need to be fulfilled to form a free service. I was thinking about how good the openSUSE Buildservice is in this regard. The Buildservice might not be a ‘classical’ online service yet, but who knows how things develop and where and how the OBS gets integrated. There are plenty of ideas around in that direction.

Scott Morris from SUSE Rants writes about "When 1-Click Install Bites the Dust."

In OpenSUSE Linux, we have a wonderful thing called One-Click Install. This is a marvelous thing for new users. I love it to death, and care for it as I would my own child. Almost everyone knows that this is very cool except for maybe Christer, as he is not a believer (nuttin but love bro, loved your presentation @ UTOSC). That said, what happens when it stops working or gets broken?

AutoYaST is already here and when it comes to RPM, a Novell employee writes about "interoperability efforts" (more of a Microsoft-esque term, typically used when standards are neglected).

Bubli said that it might be a good idea to write an article of a very basic step by step instruction for AutoYaST and I had to agree with that. So this is more for people who don't ask questions like "can I use the 'ask' feature for 'rules' in AutoYaST?" ;)

Repository branching takes place ahead of the official arrival of OpenSUSE 11.2:

As you might know, Contrib is a universal repository for third-party packages. Branching of this repository to openSUSE:11.2:Contrib is going to happen on October, 30, so if you want to have your favorite application or tool included in openSUSE:11.2:Contrib, please submit your request as soon as possible.

More packages are being built for OpenSUSE and there is even a Firefox Personas entry for it.

Moving on with this technical side of things, except for some OpenSUSE instructions we have also found some raves, such as a recommendation from SJVN, who loves SLED.

OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE, like Fedora, is also a major distributor's community Linux. In this case, Novell (http://www.novell.com) is the company behind the distro. Unlike Fedora, however, openSUSE tends to be less bleeding edge and more stable. It also includes software like Mono, which brings .NET programs to Linux, along with other Windows-friendly software. Free-software purists hate this and so tend to avoid Novell and openSUSE. Personally, I have little problem with that, and I like openSUSE a lot. The latest version, openSUSE 11.2, is almost ready to go. I'm not ready to review it quite yet, but I can tell you already that it's a winner.

Also, if you're looking for PCs for a business, Novell is the only company that offers a Linux desktop, SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) with all the enterprise support trimmings and Windows domain and AD (Active Directory) compatibility. If I were running a business today, my desktops would probably be running SLED.

OpenSUSE is also mentioned in this roundup of distributions that will soon be released, amongst other similar lists.

- openSuSE 11.2: Due just over a week after Mandriva 2010, on 12 November. Once again, Linux kernel 2.6.31, KDE 4.3 and Gnome 2.28, and a variety of other new packages. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like openSuSE has made some huge strides forward in usability, flexibility, reliability and even cosmetics over the past couple of releases, and this one looks like it will be no exception. I've had it loaded on various of my systems since about Milestone 3, and it has been interesting to watch how the diversity of systems on which it installs and runs easily has improved.

Here is the latest OpenSUSE Weekly News, as well as a reminder and announcement of a translation tool for it.

SUSE (SLES/SLED)

Last week we wrote about SUSE support in new Compaq/HP computers and there is still some coverage of that.

This week we have Teradata, which came out with the following press release that includes:

Teradata Express Cloud Offerings

The two new Teradata Express cloud offerings are built on Teradata Express, which is a free, non-production version of Teradata Database software intended for developers and evaluation scenarios. The cloud versions of Teradata Express support up to one terabyte of data and are powered by Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

Here is some news coverage of the SUSE part:

Teradata will add cloud versions of Teradata Express to support up to 1TB of data and powered by Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

SP3 of SLE* 10 is still being mentioned in some Web sites:

Novell announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 3, offering customers the latest fixes, patches and updates issued for the SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform, as well as support for the latest hardware.

As a minor last note about Linspire, the fight against Michael Robertson carries on as he loses his case [1, 2]. And in other Robertson news, the media industry wants to sue personally. Tough times for him. His Linspire identity got lost inside Xandros. ⬆