fter this previous post, and over at the IRC channel, I promised AlbertoP some more specific details. He asked for a better supported set of complaints that show the weaknesses of OpenSUSE 11.0. So here is just a quick rundown.
Too much like Vista, says Techie Moe in his short review.
If SuSE is actively trying to make Vista converts feel comfortable (at the expense of everyone else), they’re catering to a different demographic than me. When that sort of thing happens, I look elsewhere.
Visual gripes aside I had a solid experience with OpenSuSE 11, when I installed it from the DVD. It’s not quite something I’d pay $60USD for, but it would let me do what I needed on Rig 2 in a pinch.
Some members of the free software community will reject openSUSE out of hand, remembering the Microsoft-Novell pact in November 2006, and damning openSUSE along with its patron Novell. That is understandable if not entirely fair.
However, thinking only on the technical side, a better reason to have reservations about openSUSE is its lack of focus. These days, major distributions are known for a particular focus — for example, Ubuntu for user-friendliness, Fedora for the latest innovations, and Debian for stability and software freedom. By contrast, like the distributions of a decade ago, is still trying to be everything to everybody.
I have finished setting up openSUSE 11.0 on my HP dv2000z AMD Turion64 X2. Up to version 10.3 I was running the 32-bit version of SUSE and decided now was a good time to do a ‘New’ install and give x86_64 a spin.
[…]
I’ve covered the basics for getting openSUSE 11.0 x86_64 installed. So far, I have had only a few minor ‘nuisance’ issues described above and feel that the openSUSE Development Team have done a great job of putting together another winner. YaST is even easier to use combined with ‘one-click’ installations that puts it on the same level of ease of use with Ubuntu’s Synaptic GUI. At the same time openSUSE is a power-user’s Linux.
Beranger takes things apart, as one just ought to expect.
I was initially impressed by what I thought it was minutiae in Bruce’s report, but this ended shortly after I noticed he mixed old and new impressions as if everything was hot stuff. The babbling about the EULA is certainly BS: «By accepting the license, you agree not to distribute copies for profit or bundled with anything else, and also not to reverse engineer or transfer rights. The rationale is probably that the license refers to the distribution as a whole, but, all the same, it seems at odds with the free licenses of the individual applications — especially any version of the GNU General Public License — so you might want to consult a lawyer before using openSUSE commercially.»
So, to summarize at this point, I am considerably happier with openSuSE 11.0 than i was after first installing it. However, I still think that it is much more complex, and requires a lot more fiddling and tuning from the user, than Ubuntu 8.04. If I were setting up a system for someone else, I would certainly install Ubuntu. But if I were setting up a system for myself, I would seriously consider openSuSE, and I will have to do some more investigation before making a final decision.
In the last few days I managed to install openSUSE 11.0 on more than 6 desktops, helping my friends on setting up the distribution, and on one of them I encountered a strange problem, running KDE 4.0. The problem occurred with the Audigy 2 ZS card, same as the one I have. From forums I noticed that I was not the only one to get this strange hiccup. As it seems, this small problem lies within the KMix settings.
Looking for software that isn’t there is a nuisance, though you can’t expect the repositories to contain everything you like. What really got on my nerve was the menu panel. I switch from app to app and to click on Computer, then on More programs and then have to wait in order to see the list and then find the application is cumbersome and requires more mouse clicks than I want. Okay, I didn’t dump it immediately. I added a new panel and a menubar.
So, my conclusion. If you change the openSUSE 11.0 menu to the traditional GNOME menu and disable some of the need features of openSUSE it feels very very similar.
I started using Linux at the suggestion of a friend, around the time of RedHat 7.1, and that friend told me to install KDE because it was better than GNOME, and I did.
First, the installer misdetected my monitor resolution, then i told him the good one, but that ended up in a messed xorg.conf that applied zoom onto the desktop, i had the remove the Option “PreferredMode” line from the file.
In the future, I would appreciate that developers focus on the individual applications and drivers, to reach a very high level of desktop functionality.
This is not intended to demoralise. It’s mostly specific and instructive. █
[M]ark [S]huttleworth buys [M]icro[S]oft codecs for Ubuntu
The following observation came up in our IRC channel just a short while ago. It indicates that Ubuntu engaged in licensing of codecs from Microsoft.
<microsoft-spy> schestowitz: you are allowed, Ubuntu licensed Windows Media from Microsoft for Netbooks
<jbh> I don’t know anyone in CA
<moparx> I’ll never understand why a distro (or any foss developer for that matter) would purposefully taint themselves for some of microsoft’s proprietary scraps.
<schestowitz> Gah. Maybe that’s why they don’t allow downloads of it.
<schestowitz> Software patents aren’t even valid where Canonical is.
<schestowitz> ms-spy, got a URL, please?
<jbh> never even heard of netbooks before
<microsoft-spy> schestowitz, how about http://www.canonical.com/netbooks ?
<schestowitz> I believe this is important because given what I know I worry that MS (Mark S.) would do the same with MS for business ‘enterprise’ boxes.
<microsoft-spy> schestowitz, MS does whatever benefits him, proprietary kernel parts etc
<schestowitz> Which MS?
<schestowitz>
<microsoft-spy> Shuttleworth
<schestowitz> Well, that’s very problematic because he enables Microsoft to control the price of Free software.
<schestowitz> They already cross-licence with Apple, but they play by their own rules.
<microsoft-spy> he just says “All the *applications* in Ubuntu are free software only.”
<schestowitz> Cross-licensing (pardon the typo above) is incompatible with the GPL.
<schestowitz> Yes, but..
<microsoft-spy> so does not include drivers, firmware, codecs, …
<schestowitz> Just to be clear, the issue is not binary/FOSS, but gratis/taxed
<schestowitz> This forbids redistribution, which is also why they don’t permit downloads. It’s like another Moonlight.
In order to defend such plots, Microsoft has been fighting for DMCA around the world — essentially extending beyond the boundaries of the United States. Recently it was Canada that got targeted and in the news you find Red Hat’s founder, Bob Young, entering the ring.
Lulu Inc. CEO Bob Young is a major voice in the open source software industry, but according to him the entire community has been unjustifiably ignored throughout the Canadian government’s copyright reform initiatives.
Last year, the Conservative government vowed to adopt copyright laws which would make it illegal to modify or remove any device or software fitted with a technical protection measures (TPMs). After months of hearsay and numerous delays, the buzz on Parliament Hill now suggests a proposed copyright bill from Industry Minister Jim Prentice is imminent.
In the wake of these rumors — which many industry activists have begun referring to as the Canadian version of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — a new open source software alliance has added their name to the lengthy list of opposition to the Industry Minister’s soon-to-be-unveiled legislation.
This is a dangerous precedence that Microsoft is setting and It’s sad to see Canonical and Intel playing along. Nevertheless, it’s not surprising given the nearness of Intel and Microsoft. In private, sources told us a few months ago that Mark Shuttleworth negotiated codecs with Microsoft. █
…Unless you’re a paying customer of Novell (and Microsoft)
Our recent writings about Mono ought to have convincingly shown (well, hopefully they have) why it’s a risk we mustn’t accept. We dealt with Mono, Moonlight and GNOME separately over the past 3 days. Descending to a level that involves more pertinent details might be helpful but not a necessity.
As we stressed about a year ago, Microsoft’s .NET on the Net is intended to turn GNU/Linux into second-class citizens even on the World Wide Web. It can easily make all users of all platforms technically dependent on Microsoft (documentation, distribution, licences, legal threats, etc.) and again… all just as we warned approximately a year ago, so there’s no late realisation. Novell could and should have seen this too (Miguel de Icaza already has). It just probably didn’t mind because it serves its investors well. Never mind if it harms its suppliers (programmers)…
“Adopting Moonlight and Mono is accepting dominance of the Microsoft API. ”Adopting Moonlight and Mono is accepting dominance of the Microsoft API. That’s a helluva lot of power to give Microsoft over its #1 rival, which it is unable to compete against using conventional subversive tactics. It has tried many things to no avail (see the Halloween Documents).
The following short piece from Linux.com contains some interesting and lesser-known bits of information. It shows you just what type of treatment you’ll most likely receive for being independent from Novell (and from Microsoft, by association).
The binary version of Moonlight does not have audio and video support built-in. If you want the audio and video features you have to build Moonlight from source using the instructions on the Mono wiki.
Let us say that you, an experienced 1337 hack3r, managed to properly compile the shebang and have it work the way you like it. Does that make you ‘covered’? No? Can you recall what Groklaw shared the other day, regarding the legal conditions that come with use of Moonlight?
Not afraid yet? “Microsoft will never sue,” you say? What about its patent trolls, such as its buddy from Intellectual Ventures? Watch the pompous man as he speaks at All Things D.
Calacanis had an interesting question: Is IV making an unethical land grab for patents? His answer was that he didn’t know how to answer that question, except that people might complain if he has a lot of success, but no one was going to give him back his money. (Fair enough—B.L.)
Guy from Intel asks if an unintended consequence of IV’s patent action and speculation is that big companies would keep extending patents to protect them. Nathan says it’s BS. Most companies are doing R&D with a little R and a BIG D. They need to put more into the research. If people know they can spin out inventions, like they do divisions, they’ll be more likely to do more research.
“If you’re not doing something that is somewhat threatening to the apple cart, you’re not doing something interesting.”
In other coverages of this session, Nathan Myhrvold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] made it more clear that he prefers to ‘license’ (nice word for “extortion”) rather than sue. Remember that similar rules apply to OOXML. █
As we recently came to discover, Germany is among the faster adopters of OpenDocument format [1, 2]. As more proof of this, consider yesterday’s new evidence of increased vendor support for OpenOffice.org. In addition, remember the consultancy which was built around KOffice, specifically in Germany. The ball is rolling.
ODF is a simpler format that is easier to process, and less tied to legacy issues found in Microsoft office software. Open source office software is available for ODF formats. Red Hat, like many open source companies, will continue to support ODF and encourage governments to adopt ODF instead of OOXML.
Texas Hears from ODF Supporter
Texas was among the states that were prepared to make pro-ODF legislation [1, 2, 3, 4], only to find itself caving to systematic lobbying campaigns and bald-faced bullying. It may be considered “old news” by now, but it doesn’t lessen the seriousness of Microsoft’s actions, which must never be seen as less severe. Microsoft’s aggressive battle against ODF has gone on for quite some time. Only a single company (and those whom it paid) could afford to fight an entire industry, academic institutes and even governments, all of whom fostered real standards rather than an application (Microsoft Office)
I believe that it is important that we recognize the concept of what I will refer to as “Civil ICT Rights” – rights such as freedom of speech, and freedom of association, that we increasingly exercise on line, rather than in person. I am happy to report to you that certain interoperability standards can play an essential role in guaranteeing our Civil ICT Rights. Not surprisingly, I call such standards “Civil ICT Standards.” By adopting the right standards, the State can help ensure that any citizen, anytime, and from anywhere, can interact with her government electronically – even with many modern cell phones.
For those who favour videos (and can tolerate Adobe Flash), below are a couple from last year. █
Alex Brown has unleashed some more material just days after protests against ISO’s miserable failure. Groklaw takes a look at what’s available and soon concludes that ISO has just shot itself in the foot with sheer hypocrisy.
There are two more documents from the BRM meeting available now on Alex Brown’s blog:
[…]
If you open the zip file and look at the document titled PT-62A2.doc and put it next to the Resolutions document [text], specifically Resolution 23, I think you’ll find that they say, put together, that any applications wishing interoperability with OOXML in sound must use MP3. This is non-free, being patent-encumbered. If you go to Audiopeg.com, it tells us, “Audio MPEG is protected by a portfolio of patents covering a large number of countries.” Therefore, by my reading, the proposed spec can’t be implemented in free software and in a backhanded way, the GPL has just been exiled again. What kind of standard is OOXML if the GPL, which is what Linux is licensed under, can’t freely interoperate? FOSS is a new factor that standards bodies simply must consider. It’s not like the old, proprietary days, when it was like a club, and everybody had similar business plans.
How can a body which strives to deliver standards be so naive? To make matters worse, to require the use of ‘anti-standards’ applications (e.g. Microsoft Word) as tools for voting on choice/replacement is a catch 22. It is almost as though they promote the same problem which they purport to be trying to resolve. In fact, not being part of the solution arguably makes them part of the problem.
What seems to escape many people’s attention is the inclusion of videos, sounds and other enclosures in things such as PowerPoint presentations.
Does that mean that ASF and WMV are excluded from the list of supported codecs? Of course not, it is a list of suggestions, and Any supported video type is supported, and the ECMA intentions are pretty clear:
we do not believe that preventing the use of other codecs is appropriate, as it will prevent innovation
And when it comes to address the reference to Quicktime, it is a patented format which requires royalty payments to MPEG-LA suckers.
Again, ECMA seems devoted to say: Good Bye Interoperability!
Where are these covered in the proposed standard? Are such peripheral files covered by the so-called patent ‘promise’? If so, does that mean that Microsoft’s video and audio patents are hereby declared void or rendered legally impotent? If not, why not?
If anything, this proves that OOXML is little more than a dud so deeply integrated with the Microsoft stack in its entirely, but then again, we knew this already. OOXML is not even cross-platform. Parts of it are Microsoft Windows-only, making this more severe an observation than the fact that OOXML is a partial (far from complete) written representation of Microsoft Office (version undefined because it does not exist and never will).
The FSF continues to warn about the effects of software patents [via Digital Majority], but the resultant incompatibilities with Free software seem not to bother Microsoft.
Dr. Moglen states that free software is a fundamental requirement for a democratic and free society which is surrounded by and dependent upon technical devices. He asserts that only if the software controlling these devices is open to all can we balance power equally.
His talk was about software patents: the danger that they present to a free society, to the free flow of information, and to future innovation.
Whenever Torvalds speaks out in public, we listen because he is very influential and his personal opinion affects the opinion of many other developers. We certainly do try to parse Torvalds interviews in order to gain better insights into his views on Novell-type deals with Microsoft.
The newly-published second part of his interview with Jim Zemlin contains some good bits, including this one:
Linus Torvalds: Patents are nasty. It’s kind of hard to really say a lot more than the fact that patents on ideas in general are a huge mistake and the whole notion that you can have patents, business models and software is pretty broken to begin with.
And at least in the EU so far they’ve been able to fight that whole notion of patenting software. In the U.S., I think there are certainly more than just open source people who are realizing that software patents are a huge mistake.
There is some further analysis of this interview in NetworkWorld.
“…They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don’t think they’ve — not that I’ve gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don’t think they’ve generally used patents as a weapon,” Torvalds said. “But they’re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, ‘Hey, isn’t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.’”
[…]
Microsoft’s recent work around improving its platform’s interoperability with Linux left Torvalds largely unmoved.
“I think there are people inside Microsoft who really want to improve interoperability and I also think there are people inside Microsoft who would much rather just try to stab their competition in the back,” he said. “I think the latter class of people have usually been the one[s] who won out in the end, but — so I wouldn’t exactly trust them.”
We commented the first part if this interview here. There is a good summary with links to previous interviews here. As for Alan Cox, here you have a good summary of his views. He seems to like the GPLv3 and he also believes that it’s right for Novell to be punished for what they did. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
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.