05.03.08

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part II: On OpenSUSE (11b2), SUSE, JeOS and Novell

Posted in GNU/Linux, Interview, Opensuse, Videos, Virtualization at 9:00 am by Roy Schestowitz

SUSE/Novell People

There are some noteworthy new introductions which include this textual one about Michael Löffler of OpenSUSE.

This week ‘People of openSUSE’ scope out openSUSE Product Manager Michael Löffler known for his great work in helping setting up the openSUSE Project, bridge between Novell and community, openSUSE Shop, and so much more..!

Mono and Microsoft praises from Novell/Mono you will find in the following new interview with Frank Rego.

The interview above is from Linuxfest Northwest and there is also one with the community manager of OpenSUSE, Joe Brockmier.

OpenSUSE News

Speaking of Zonker, he gave a quick status update on the merger of SUSE forums. That was just a few days ago.

A few weeks ago we announced that we’d be merging suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de, and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com into one central forum under forums.opensuse.org. (You can visit the URL right now if you like, but there’s little there aside from the initial announcement…)

[...]

In this case, “quiet” only means that things are moving along quite well. The current thought is that we’ll be ready to launch the merged forums in mid-May.

A PC that comes with OpenSUSE preloaded was taken for a test drive in the UK and here are the findings.

The LinuXPC looks lovely in its Apple-like brushed aluminium casing. Upon first switching it on, you’re asked to complete a few simple tasks - set your administrator and user details etc - before the default openSUSE 10.3 desktop loads. All my hardware was detected and correctly configured.

[...]

On the plus side, it’s a superbly built, tiny PC with a reliable Linux OS. There’s enough hardware and software to make you highly productive, and with the included two-year, pick-up-and-return warranty, it’s good value at £500 (inc VAT).

Several key things have been released, the first of which is OpenSUSE’s latest newsletter, summarised thusly:

In this week:

* openSUSE: Google Summer of Code projects announced
* People of openSUSE: Michael Löffler
* openSUSE Build Service Version 0.9.1 Release
* KDE 4.1 Alpha1 Live
* First look at SUSE on the HP Mini-Note

The second thing is the OpenSUSE-based KDE 4.1 Live CD. which now had Alpha1 on it.

Stephan Binner’s openSUSE KDE 4.1 Alpha1 Live has been uploaded and is there for you to try. It is the first real release of the KDE 4.1 branch after almost 45000 commits and is the result of 4 months of steady KDE development. It has rough edges, but it is a nice preview of things shaping up to become usable and ready for the KDE loving user.

Most importantly perhaps, the third thing is the announcement of Beta 2 of OpenSUSE 11.0. Francis Giannaros heralded this in the mailing lists some hours ago. The messages was as follows.

---

The openSUSE team is proud to announce the second Beta release of
openSUSE 11.0! New changes include countless bug fixes, as well as the
import of the new openSUSE 11.0 artwork for login, splash screens and
more. The live installation should work, but there are several known
quirks, so be sure to check the most annoying bugs list before
proceeding with the live installation.

For screenshots and additional information, see the news posting at:

     http://en.opensuse.org/Screenshots/openSUSE_11.0_Beta2

Remember that this is a beta. It may not be safe to run for production
systems, and should be used by users interested in testing the next
release of openSUSE for bugs.

Most Annoying Bugs
===============

Live CD:

  * Automatic Configuration after boot into installed system behaves
  weird (Bug #385563, Bug #385558)
  * Installation leaves traces of Live system (Bug #385829)

See the Most Annoying Bugs[0] page on the wiki for an up-to-date list.

[0] http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs:Most_Annoying_Bugs_11.0_dev

Call for Testing
===============

If you want to help testing our standard test-cases, just take a look
at openSUSE.org/Testing, and in particular the Testing:Features_11.0
[1] sub-page which includes a definitive list of the features added
into openSUSE 11.0. You can also coordinate with others and subscribe
to the opensuse-testing@opensuse.org mailing list to help with our
organized testing.

[1] http://en.opensuse.org/Testing:Features_11.0

Media and Download
===============

openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 for i386, x86-64 and PPC comes as different media
sets, all of which can be downloaded from:

     http://software.opensuse.org/developer

Deltas from Beta 1 are also provided at
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0-Beta2/iso/delta/

Comments, Feedback and Helping
===============

openSUSE 11.0 Beta 2 is a great time to start testing-out openSUSE
11.0 before it is officially released. You can directly help and
contribute to the openSUSE distribution by filing bug reports and
giving feedback to the developers.

  * Reporting bugs: Please report all bugs you find on in our
Bugzilla as explained on bugs.openSUSE.org.
  * Discussion and feedback is very welcome as well; the most
appropriate place is the opensuse-factory@opensuse.org mailing list.
Or in the #opensuse-factory IRC channel.

For other queries and ways to communicate with the openSUSE community
take a look at the http://openSUSE.org/Communicate wiki page.

The next planned release[2] is openSUSE 11.0 Beta 3 on May 13.

[2] http://openSUSE.org/Roadmap

---

SUSE

The press release “Deploying Suse Linux Enterprise Server” was an interesting one to come across.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to save quite a bit of money on your network is to utilize a Suse Linux Enterprise Server (or any other GNU/Linux Server) as a Domain Controller for Windows Clients.

More interesting and important were articles about Novell’s JeOS, which turns out to have a free sibling called LimeJeOS. CRN tested this.

Getting started on JeOS was fairly simple. Reviewers downloaded the VMware package and obtained an activation code from Novell’s web site. The virtual machine file was opened using VMware Server. When the virtual machine is powered on, it doesn’t load a graphical interface like SUSE does ” it merely checks and loads a handful of hardware packages, such as detecting a network controller and configuring the network interface. Once the ten or so components have been configured, the user is prompted to login at the command line. After logging in as root, the operating system was registered with Novell in order to access the entire library of SLES packages for installation. Running zypper, the package installer, shows that all of the packages are available, such as SuSEFirewall2, Mozilla Firefox, python, apache, and postgreSQL.

[...]

This wouldn’t be Linux if there wasn’t a community-based version. Named LimeJeOS, this is a variant of openSUSE.

SUSE is not the first Linux flavor to join the appliance and JeOS party ” Canonical launched Ubuntu JeOS and Red Hat expects to have an Appliance Operating System in beta mid-year. That said, Novell has the channel presence and well-defined support packages to make the shift to SUSE-based virtual appliances a possibility.

Lora Bentley wrote about it too. There’s also a little catfight over there in Lora’s blog at the moment. Palamida is responding to an article about Black Duck’s latest acquisition.

Last but not least, here is a new video of Novell’s penguin offering free hugs in Wien. █

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