09.14.07
Do-No-Evil Saturday: OpenSUSE & KDE 4, New Deals, Collaborations, and Support
OpenSUSE
As usual, we’ll begin with Novell’s darling, the OpenSUSE project. The project’s site features a new interview with one member of this community, Edith Parzefall. The site has also posted some sneak peeks at KDE 4 on the latest build of OpenSUSE.
KDE 3 will still be the default KDE session for openSUSE 10.3, but KDE 4 will be making its way in steadily.
As always, TuxMachines is quick to test-drive and post a report about the latest test version, beta 3.
It was revealed by beineri that “openSUSE 10.3 [will] not shipping KDE 4.0 as default KDE desktop” as previously hoped. This is probably due to the updated release schedule of KDE 4. I’m sure everyone’s heard by now that KDE 4 won’t be finalized until just before Christmas. They will still probably include the latest developmental release at least on mirrors.
Press Releases
Novell has had quite a few of those. Here are just a couple whose significance is not mentioned later in this weekly report because they are not (or barely) related to Linux and open source.
Novell SecureLogin Positioned in the Leaders Quadrant for Enterprise Single Sign-On
Novell today announced it has been positioned in the leaders quadrant of Gartner, Inc.’s, “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Single Sign-On, 2007″ by Gregg Kreizman, August 30, 2007. Novell(R) SecureLogin, the company’s single sign-on solution, helps organizations manage the complicated process of providing users with access to company networks and resources. SecureLogin eliminates the need for users to manage multiple passwords, allowing enterprise customers to improve network security and better automate business processes to deliver bottom-line savings.
North America’s largest transportation agency, New York City Transit, has turned to Novell for improved security and management of its identity infrastructure and network access. With the world’s largest fleet of subway cars and public buses, NYC Transit transports more than 7 million people each day. NYC Transit is using Novell® identity and security management solutions to centralize and automate its identity infrastructure for 49,000 staff members across 500 locations, ensuring timely and secure employee access to network resources.
Deals
Novell celebrated another coupon deal, which isn’t exactly the type of things we love.
For Siemens, the agreement will support the Siemens operating company through the work of the ISEC subsidiary of Siemens Enterprise Communications, which is responsible for customer software application development and management worldwide. Due to the large quantity of current and legacy Linux applications in customer environments, Siemens has significant need for Windows and Linux platform compatibility.
Novell released its quarterly report a week ago and its income statement was made available a few days ago.
Technical Collaborations
Novell has been (and will be) working with AMD on their open source drivers.
The new open-source driver that’s being written so far by Novell should be released next week.
Novell works with VMWare on further refinements to SUSE performance on the hypervisor.
To deliver this improved performance, Novell modified the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel to support the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and hypervisor that simplifies the task of virtualization and makes Linux a more efficient guest operating system when running in VMware environments.
Support and Supply
Bruce Lowry was pleased to talk about a support centre’s certification.
Novell’s European Support Center, the nexus of Novell’s technical support operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has just achieved certification under the prestigious Service Capability & Performance (SCP) Support and Field standards.
ModusLink was also pleased to have received an award from Novell.
ModusLink’s Kildare, Ireland Solution Center received the honor due to its consistently outstanding performance in facilitating Novell’s complex global supply chain with fulfillment, kitting and vendor-managed inventory (VMI) processes during the last two years.
Miscellaneous Stories
There’s some minor news from a company that is accociated with Ray Noorda.
Lindon, Utah-based Center 7, a provider of hosted IT services, said Monday that it has added former Forum Systems CEO Wes Swenson to its advisory board. Center 7 said that it is venture backed by Canopy Ventures. Center 7 said that Swenson will advise its CEO, Nathan Hatch, on financial matters, strategic and tactical direction and business development for the firm. Canopy Ventures is the venture capital arm of Ray Noorda, founder of Novell.
posted on Monday, September 10, 2007
Novell’s Orchestrator gets a quick mention in a list of VM lifecycle management tools.
VMware is offering VirtualCenter and Lab Manager, and Novell has Zenworks Orchestrator, VM Builder and VM Warehouse. There are plenty of others, too.
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.