06.29.07
Do-No-Evil Saturday: Opensuse Does Well and Novell Goes Deeper into Identity Management
It’s that time of the week again. Indeed, Novell is not evil, so the tone will be changed to give a rare praise.
Opensuse developers are apparently working on an attractive graphical front end which enables creation of customised Live CDs.
The module is in very early stage of development, but it clearly shows the promise of making system imaging approachable to everyday.
It would be nice to see it matching the capabilities of a similar feature that can be found in PCLOS 2007.
The next step would be to be able to create system snapshots out of an existing machine - PCLinuxOS supports this with the help of a Debian script afaik. That makes it even easier to distribute specific, dedicated appliances.
Red Hat boasts similar features as well.
Fedora 7 hits the streets on May 31st. One of the most exciting features of the Fedora 7 release is the fact that users can remix the Fedora code in any variety of ways. Tools are provided that allow the user to build either a customized LiveCD or installable ISO, and to reach out to any 3rd-party RPM repositories and pull in packages from them at compose time.
Here is yet another good review of Opensuse.
Overall, openSUSE 10.2 is great to use and feels as though it runs faster than any other distribution on my laptop. I would highly recommend using 10.2 for Linux beginners or people looking for a great out-of-the-box operating system, even though it does require minimal accompanying downloads. For advanced users, I think that openSUSE should be given a chance and I think many power users are watching the release of 10.3 very closely. I never seem to hear details about KDE 4 without at least a mention of openSUSE 10.3.
Do remember that our anger and frustration are directed at Novell’s management, not the various developers. Some come-and-go (or “hit-and-run” rather) readers apparently fail to see this. Association and affiliation lead to misinterpretation and inference.
Nat Friendman announced SUSE Hack Week on Monday. Here is a new video from Prague’s Hack Week.
Also at the beginning of the week, a couple of articles on virtualisation were published. Novell’s participation was included in a separate article.
Later in the week, Novell mentioned some video highlights that you might wish to watch. Novell also talked about development methods and geography issues, with particular emphasis on Asia. This was quite insightful. Of particular interest was the following bit:
“Software engineering is an art, it’s a fundamentally different mindset to software manufacturing.”
Towards the end of the week, Novell unleashed a few press releases that boasted its cross-platform identity management software.
By making this type of technology available to Linux and Macintosh users, DigitalMe is helping accelerate the adoption of this user-centric approach.
There is also this one:
Interoperable, cross-platform Information Cards provide a much needed open identity framework that is both transparent and expedient for web users,” said Dale Olds, distinguished engineer and Bandit Project leader at Novell. “Sxip Access support of DigitalMe is a major step forward in security and ease of use for on-demand applications.
And this:
SailPoint Technologies today announced the first standards-based integration linking its identity risk management solution with Novell’s identity and security solutions.
More ZENworks raves were soon to follow, but all these raves from Novell were possibly overshadowed at this point. Why? Because Red Hat released its encouraging financial figures.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.