11.22.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: OpenSUSE 11.0 and 11.1, KDE4 Resources
NOTHING PARTICULARLY interesting has happened, but there are a few posts out there which are worth mentioning.
OpenSUSE 11.0
Novell Communities may be something new, but maybe they are just not so visible. Either way, Novell has some new instructional pages over there and the British press uses OpenSUSE 11.0 to review VMware Workstation 6.5.
We installed Workstation 6.5 on a desktop system running Windows Vista Enterprise and a laptop running XP Professional. Version 6.5 is just as easy to use as earlier versions, and we installed Windows 2000, XP and Vista, along with several Linux distributions, including Oracle Enterprise Linux v5.2, Community ENTerprise Operating System 5.2 and openSUSE 11.0 enterprise desktop.
Can 11.0 really be called “enterprise desktop”? Here are some more impressions of this latest stable version of OpenSUSE.
But all of a sudden, I became bored with my computer, so I decided to replace the brown/blue with green. Well, where can I find a green distro? Oh, right - openSUSE.
It is being repeated every now and then that distributions like Mandriva or OpenSUSE in the case may be better suited than Ubuntu to a broad crowd.
Try Debian stable when you like Linux and don’t mind using the command line and searching the web for help. Try OpenSuse if you want a configuration utility. Or try a “live” distribution which boots from CD, DVD or USB storage device. And If you like Ubuntu or any other Linux variant, use it, improve it and spread the word.
OpenSUSE 11.0 is also reviewed here.
It’s been more than two years since I have reviewed SUSE 10.1. That tutorial proved to be highly popular with my readers, both in terms of reviewing a great Linux distro and allowing the new users an easy and question-less transition to the Linux world.
OpenSUSE 11.1
Almost nothing has happened, but here’s a Plasma post that uses OpenSUSE 11.1 as its reference.
Another bit for the upcoming openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 desktop is power management: KPowersave has not been ported to KDE4. Powerdevil, which will be part of KDE 4.2, comes to our rescue. Together with a backport of the battery plasmoid popup from KDE 4.2 SVN as in yesterday’s released openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5 we get a good power management solution.
KDE
A new page was created by the OpenSUSE community to introduce people to KDE4. There is a blurb about this too. OpenSUSE does a favour to other distributions here, but obviously it promotes SUSE (by location of presence).
Build Service
One of the selling points of OpenSUSE is OSB… now with ARM support.
ARM architecture going more to desktop style applications had been in press frequently during the last weeks. On top of were press releases of ARM and canonical officially announcing an ubuntu port in one of the next releases for the ARM architecture. Applications are more of type nettop or advanced PDA like the nokia n810, than what is currently known as traditional embedded applications (just to name a few examples).
It’s not just additional architectures though. OSB has some new software.
I try testing xfce4 desktop and find some bugs. But I also find that some really interesting missing in opensuse build service, so I add two new applications to build service (gnome community repository…but now gaupol is available only in my personal repository, because in gnome pygtk wait for python 1.6) - osmo and gaupol
Other
Microsoft’s Partner Group did a lot of ’slime jobs’ recently [1, 2]. The community leader of OpenSUSE responded to their FUD as well, which is commendable.
The good news? Gartner says that 100 percent of businesses will be using open source within the next 12 months. The bad news? Gartner doesn’t really seem to understand open source licensing requirements, and is trying to scare companies into adding bureaucracy around open source adoption. According to Gartner, companies need to “adopt and enforce an OSS policy.” Calling out open source for special policies only highlights that Gartner doesn’t yet “get it” with regards to open source.
For more information and news from last week, OpenSUSE Weekly News might be of use.
In this week:
* openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5 Released
* Updated Build Service Roadmap
* KDE’s Compositing in openSUSE 11.1
* SLES Now Easy for Users of RHEL and CentOS
* YaST Preview
On we move to Ballnux distributions. █
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.