07.19.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, SLES/SLED, Ubuntu, HP, Virtualization, Mandriva at 7:41 am by Roy Schestowitz
Following the release of OpenSUSE 11.0, quite a few people decided to explore the distribution. Novell has begun studying OpenSUSE 11.0 users. It’s doing it at the moment using a survey that was launched last week. In addition, the OpenSUSE community pays its respect to Bryen Yunashko and Frank Sundermeyer, both of whom seem like veterans.
Listed below are articles and blog posts that shed some light on opinions and assessments of the latest distribution and its surrounding system.
Ubuntu/OpenSUSE Comparisons
This one has truly become a typical and popular comparison, possibly due to the message delivered by DistroWatch rankings. Here is a duel involving
Kubuntu and OpenSUSE for a change (just KDE).
I removed Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 remix and installed openSUSE with KDE 4. My first impression was: Wow this looks great. OpenSUSE looks very polished compared with Kubuntu. Everything works as it should, I am impressed. I have been using it for a few days and I was thinking off going back to Kubuntu because I know it better and can get things done faster with it until today.
Here is another one about Ubuntu and OpenSUSE.
If you have followed my blog for any extended amount of time, you know that I have tried and used an extensive number of Linux distributions. I have finally found my home distro with openSUSE, and that is where I will stay for the foreseeable future. I do, and will still keep up with what’s going on in the entire Linux community, since it interests me immensely.
And here is one where Ubuntu beats OpenSUSE.
It was dead easy with Ubuntu. Go to screen resolution, choose the value you want, and Bob’s your uncle. I can live with that. But openSuSE was a different story, it didn’t seem to want to actually change the resolution, no matter what I did. I selected 1280×1024, rebooted, closed the lid, booted with the lid closed, and everything else I could think of, and it never changed. Sigh.
The HP 2133 Mini-Note ends up with Ubuntu rather than SLED on it. Blame Shawn Powers if this is seen as inappropriate or upsetting (given the permanency of SLED on this unit).
KDE4 on OpenSUSE
OpensusEEE gets some Plasma on it.
Now down to what’s important. KDE 4.1 is clearly becoming a very polished desktop! Folderview rocks, and once the desktop alpha thing is fixed ( not sure what else to call it ). The idea of that is so kewl, its much better that a standard icon desktop, since you can do so much more. If you really want an icon wasteland, u can have one, but i like order on my desktop ( sadly my wife is using the laptop for work until we get a pc, so she dumps everything on the desktop ).
The above is about 4.1 Beta 1. A build of KDE 4.1 RC 1 is already available for OpenSUSE and other distributions like Mandriva 2008.1. I’m personally a bit of a Mandriva fan at the moment (migrated to 2008.1 Spring quite recently). I could possibly also report a bug that I had noticed. In the main KDE panel, if placed vertically, resizing it to less than 100% or moving it about leaves a void without a wallpaper and some odd effects. Either way, consider giving Mandriva 2008.1 a try. Everything ought to work ‘out of the box’ based not only on my personal experience.
OpenSUSE Impressions
There are some other experiences with OpenSUSE 11.0 that were shared in public. Not reviews; just experiences and short essays. Here are 3 of them:
1. Thoughts on OpenSUSE 11.0
Here are my experiences installing OpenSUSE 11.0 on my desktop PC (I had already successfully installed it on a VM).
2. Open Source OS’s Part 3: OpenSuse
Well, OpenSuse is probably the best Open Source OS out there with a large corporate sponsor. I think it is the most intuitive, the most in line with what consumers want, has the best features, is the sleekest, easiest to customize desktop OS that is free. Be warned, there is a costly one that is even better but it costs something like $80. A lot of companies buy the liscense becasue it is a stable,
3. That didn’t end well…
Feeling a bit experimental, I decided to try openSUSE. It was…different that’s for sure. Slick, fast and the KDE implementation of much more stable. The installation however still left something to be desired.
David Meyer, the reporter from ZDNet UK, got his boxed copy and took some photos.
Yes! We got our hands on the hottest, most talked-about technological must-have… it is, of course, the boxed version of openSUSE 11.0!
Instructional
Troubleshooting is probably the boring part which isn’t newsworthy. There were quite a few complicated solutions and some simpler bits of advice too. Here is one about repositories and the new OpenSUSE Build Service (recently hit the 1.0 milestone).
One of the things that has most impressed me about openSUSE is the ability to add additional YaST repositories from the openSUSE Build Service.
For those wishing to set up a powerful OpenSUSE server at no cost, here’s some advice.
For the Linux distribution, I’ve decided to go with OpenSUSE. Based off of Novell’s SUSE, it’s a very solid operating system and has pretty much everything we need. It’s a community project that Novell supports, and Novell aims for it to be the best distro available. You can download the DVD image here: http://software.opensuse.org/ You can then burn the DVD image with your favorite DVD burning software.
Related Products
Novell’s version of JeOS gets some special coverage in the OpenSUSE site where the role of LimeJeOS is explained.
SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS relates to LimeJeOS just like openSUSE relates to SLES. In fact, SLE JeOS is built from the latest version of SLES while LimeJeOS is built from the latest version of openSUSE. While LimeJeOS provides the latest state of the openSUSE distribution, SLE JeOS will offer all the services and support that is also available for SLES.
This was also copied and published in full here (was it permitted?).
Open-Xchange made an appearance again and it now exists on the OpenSUSE Build Service.
Today, Open-Xchange debuted its new community Open-Xchange Server application built using the new openSUSE Build Service. That means that by using one version of the application created on the build service tool, the latest Open-Xchange community version is immediately available for eight of the most popular Linux operating systems. They are Debian Etch, Red Hat Fedora 8, openSUSE 10.2, 10.3 and 11, and Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 and 8.04.
Other Bits
Earlier in the week, sensationalist reports described a network loophole (man-in-the-middle attacks) as a serious security flaw at the end-points. OpenSUSE responses to this.
Ludwig, one of our security experts, sent out a mail with a reaction to the report and I’d like to point out some of the things from the report and how it’s handled in the openSUSE 11.0 distribution.
[…]
Note that when I speak about YaST I mean everything that uses the openSUSE package management library libzypp which includes YaST, zypper and the updater applets.
As usual, for a different perspective on the news, there’s always the weekly news from the OpenSUSE Web site.
In this week:
* Next Helping Hands Event
* www.opensuse-tutorials.com
* Hubert Mantel: openSUSE Gets the JeOS
* People of openSUSE: Bryen Yunashko
* Pascal Bleser: Reporting Packman package bugs
* Jigish Gohil: New Compiz plugins
LinuxWorld is approaching, but summertime is, in general, fairly quiet. █
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07.09.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, GNOME, Patents, Open XML, HP, xandros, Corel, Linspire at 4:47 am by Roy Schestowitz
Corel has been a very bizarre company ever since its deal with Microsoft. Ambivalent, confused, aimless and reliant on other companies. That’s Corel.
It’s almost like Novell, only several years further down the line. The GNU/Linux identity of Corel is absolutely lost by now. As for Novell, that loss of identity is still ‘work in progress’.
Corel produces software only for Windows. It’s still proprietary, just as Microsoft et al prefer for it to be (Fernando Cassia calls it a mistake). Corel was among the first parties to declare support for OOXML. It was a big deal at the time. Here is the latest from yesterday’s news:
Once ousted from the desktop by Microsoft, Wordperfect is back and better
One of the first widely-used office suites on PCs was Wordperfect. Then Microsoft muscled into the game and quickly its Office suite became the de-facto standard, edging out competitors.
[…]
WPO X4 includes a range of PDF capabilities including the ability to import, edit and export PDF documents - including scanned PDFs.
WPO X4 is distributed in South Africa by Workgroup. Corel product manager at Workgroup, Kevin George, says that as well as offering good PDF support, WPO X4 is also compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 files as well as Open Document Format (ODF), used by OpenOffice.org.
More interesting perhaps is Corel’s ‘bastard child’ called Xandros. Apart from signing a software patent deal with Microsoft, it has been up to other deals and ITJungle summarises.
The commercial Linux distribution business just got a little bit less diverse but perhaps a little stronger while IT Jungle was off on holiday last week when New York-based Xandros acquired fellow Linux distro Linspire for an undisclosed sum.
[…]
Xandros, you will remember, is the company that was founded in the wake of graphics and office automation software maker Corel’s attempt to become a Linux distributor a decade ago, which it spun out in 2001 as a separate entity. Xandros has attempted to create a Debian Linux that plays nicely with Windows and has some of the same look and feel of Windows, to which the company created its own Xandros File Manager to make something that works like the File Manager in Windows. Most recently, Xandros has become famous as the supplier of the Linux embedded in the popular ASUS Eee PC, a tiny little flash-based laptop PC. (I got my wife one of these for Mother’s Day, and she adores it because she can lug it around everywhere since it is no larger than a hardcover book. Which she also lugs around, now that I think about it.) Just as Xandros was cooking up the second edition of its Xandros Server variant last summer, it acquired Scalix, the HP-UX OpenMail groupware program that was spun out of Hewlett-Packard, ported to Linux, and open sourced.
This brings us back to H-P again, and particularly its attitude towards patents. We’ve covered this before. H-P fights for its patents and, not surprisingly, it’s apathetic towards GNU/Linux. If it’s ever offered as a choice, then it’s taxed by Microsoft [1, 2].
Scalix too plays the software patents game with Microsoft (it has roots in Microsoft’s friend, Hewlett-Packard). It joined Xandros shortly after Microsoft and Xandros had signed that horrible deal. And lastly, speaking of H-P, recall what we wrote about GNOME the other day (further comments here) and remember that H-P and Xandros support Microsoft OOXML. To repeat this yet again, the concern here is that Microsoft tries to lock down the core of Free software inside Software Patent Prison, rendering it non-Free. To extent, this has already happened. █
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07.08.08
Posted in FSF, Mono, GPL, HP at 5:32 am by Roy Schestowitz
“I am convinced we have to use Windows – this is the one thing they don’t have. We have to be competitive with features, but we need something more — Windows integration.”
–Jim Allchin, Microsoft
Same old and familiar maneuvers, new project though. This time Microsoft is redoing SVN. It’s doing it the ‘Microsoft way’.
This infuriates me. This cool thing they spent six months (six!) writing is called Subversion, and it had a 1.0.0 release three years ago. Subversion had its first beta in late 2003, so the Codeplex folks are waaay behind the state of the art on this one.
[…]
This problem is ingrained at Microsoft, which feels the need to brand everything, but it is in no way limited to them.
Needless to guess, there’s some .NET dependency and integration there. The following comment ‘gets’ it.
It’s called reinvent the wheels they like so that they have copyright. Then get people to help improve their wheels and not those of someone else.
It’s a strong itch because they can then integrate that (eg, GPL.. for others) code into their Monopolyware. Keep it closed and full of hooks while the community debugs most of it for Monopolysoft, spends their (the community) time doing that instead of something that benefits the community more, and even adds innovative features while at it.
Remember what they did with Ruby [1, 2]? If not, be sure to read about it.
When Stallman et al built the GNU system, they systematically created free substitutes for proprietary yet modular pieces of UNIX. What Microsoft is doing now is it embraces the power of Free software, but it tries to spit the GPL out of it, thus giving control to Microsoft, rendering developers its slaves under the ‘open source’ promise (where open source is defined by Microsoft).
Did you know that there’s an ongoing implementation of a .NET-based emacs? Remember that Microsoft tries to market its poor Vista sibling, Server 2008, as though it’s a better Linux than Linux. How about Apple and its UNIX, which gives the false illusion of open source and POSIX while hiding all the underlying lock-ins (hardware- and software-wise)? █
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07.07.08
Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, GNOME, Open XML, IBM, HP, FOSS at 3:04 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Stormy Peters, whom we mentioned here quite recently, had an exchange of words with Roberto Galoppini the other day. There was also a response to Microsoft’s notorious participation in the Open Source ‘Census’ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], which is run by OpenLogic where Peters works.Her response seems very reasonable.
Any comment about the reaction to news of Microsoft’s Support of Open Source Census?
From the beginning, we knew that we wanted The Open Source Census to be a collaborative effort – not just specific to OpenLogic. We felt that collaboration was critical to making The Open Source Census successful. Prior to launching The Open Source Census, we began the process of reaching out to a wide variety of participants in the open source community and ecosystem. The list included large platform vendors, commercial open source vendors, open source communities and organizations, law firms and analysts. Because this is an open project, we did not limit or exclude anyone from sponsoring or participating – as long as they agreed with the goals and process for The Open Source Census. We welcome all sponsors who might want to participate and help make The Open Source Census successful.
The existent Stormy Peters-Miguel de Icaza connection should not be a serious issue because she appears to have condemned ‘the’ deal recently — however cautiously (see the link at the top). However, now comes this:
Istanbul, Turkey, July 7, 2008: The GNOME Foundation today announced the hiring of Stormy Peters as Executive Director. Stormy, a well-known industry analyst with extensive experience at Hewlett Packard and OpenLogic, will work on accelerating the adoption of GNOME and strengthening the Foundation by attracting new industry members and community contributors. “Hiring Stormy represents a major step for GNOME”, said Luis Villa, a Director of the GNOME Foundation. “With her unique background and experience, she’ll be a natural at growing industry support for the project and connecting interested parties to our community.”
That would be Hewlett Packard, the company that fought for Microsoft OOXML and participated in Vista collusions. OpenLogic is said to be headed by a former Microsoft employee, too. Need anyone reopen that can of worms that is GNOME’s attitude towards OOXML? Miguel de Icaza was the President of GNOME until last year and it’s very clear how he feels about his colleagues at Redmond.
This post needn’t be misinterpreted. Many large companies have complex agendas. The same goes for IBM, to name just one example. IBM may have married Novell and Microsoft. In general, marrying Microsoft and the FOSS world is just a case of pulling the ‘F’ out of FOSS. That’s the key concern here. █
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06.28.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, SLES/SLED, Debian, Servers, HP, Mail, xandros at 6:15 am by Roy Schestowitz
In what could be seen characterised as a battle between Microsoft partners, there’s this comparison between the ASUS Eee (with Xandros) and SLED on the HP Mini-Note.
The biggest complaints I hear about the Eee PC are that the keyboard is too small and there’s not enough screen real estate. Even the new 8.9 inch only offers 1024×600 screen res. Some people also complain that the Eee PC runs a knobbled version of Xandros Linux. A Mini-Note running SuSE Linux Enterprise should address these issues.
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06.12.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, HP at 1:16 pm by Roy Schestowitz
The release of OpenSUSE 11.0 is approaching. We gently remind readers that despite all the pretty colours in the Qt-based installer and the flexibility complexity of YaST, the distribution hasn’t sufficient added value to work better than counterparts, many of which are free and decent.
Here is what the Washington Post has just had to say about Novell’s SUSE:
Novell’s infuriatingly complicated, cranky implementation of Linux is almost guaranteed to send a beginner reeling in horror, or at least distaste.
The opinion about Vista isn’t particularly flattering either, but the author has, on numerous times in the past couple of years, expressed satisfaction with Ubuntu GNU/Linux.
You don’t need SUSE. Your peers, colleagues, family and friends probably do not need it either. I happen to keep track of OpenSUSE on a daily basis, so this is not an impulsive and spontaneous rant. SUSE is not the market leader. It lost momentum after the deal with Microsoft. █
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06.07.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, SLES/SLED, HP at 6:06 am by Roy Schestowitz
There are some new products out there which chose SUSE as their GNU/Linux distribution. It’s important to be aware of them (or avoid them). The first is the H-P mini-laptop, which is blogged about here.
SRP for the basic model which comes with 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD and SuSe Linux is P24950. It’s definitely more expensive than the Eee, but it’s more feature-packed as well.
Here are some more bits about the Netbook, including the mentioning of MSI. It uses Novell’s Linux.
Linux fans may feel slighted, however, because while the $499 Windows XP Home version is equipped as mentioned above, the $399 SUSE Linux-based version is comparatively stripped. It pares down RAM to 512MB, omits Bluetooth, and has the three-cell battery as standard.
Further information
According to MSI, the Windows version of the Wind will go on sale Jun. 16th. The Linux version will be available “later this summer.”
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06.03.08
Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Antitrust, Open XML, HP, FOSS, Dell at 10:30 am by Roy Schestowitz
Force-feeding of Silverlight at programming level and OEM level
The embrace-and-extend routine shows little or no signs of abatement. At the moment, the combination of Slashdot’s editorship and Paul Krill, both of whom occasionally push the Microsoft ‘open source’ agenda, have this to share.
Microsoft Corp. plans to demonstrate integration Friday between its new Silverlight browser plug-in technology for rich Internet applications and the Ruby on Rails Web framework.
This is not major news and it is hardly worth a front page. However, a reader sent us a pointer to the discussion in Slashdot. Here’s one small portion of it, which is the old eye-opener.
What I don’t get is, what happened to RubyCLR? This IronRuby has the same name as an old IronRuby. Microsoft hired RubyCLR developers and now is developing yet another IronRuby instead? Are they seriously starting over just to get it under a different license?!
First of all, remember that Silverlight (or Moonlight) are pretty much verboten in Free software distributions/desktops, for legal and practical reasons. Fedora forbids it. Moreover, regarding the use of IronRuby as a surrogate with Microsoft-controlled licences which give Microsoft the ‘Ruby crown’, see this recent post. Microsoft wishes to grab Ruby from the bottom. And it’s not just Ruby by the way. It’s part of a broader push.
Further to this tie-up, consider this Live Search-Silverlight crack-cocaine-like combination:
New HP-Microsoft Live Search deal is all about Silverlight
Following the recent announcement of Live Search cashback, Microsoft has today disclosed a new deal with HP that is expected to give a slight boost to the usage of both Live Search and Silverlight in the US and Canada, starting in January 2009. The deal centers around a Silverlight-powered toolbar (not to be confused with the recently updated MSN Silverlight toolbar) that Microsoft is specifically developing for HP.
As we stressed in the past, Microsoft seems to be begging for yet another antitrust action against it, but the company has too much to lose if it does not pull such tricks and inherits control of the Web from the likes of Google, Firefox, and even Yahoo!
“Microsoft may have found a workaround, essentially pulling the same trick it was using back in Netscape Era.”The antitrust aspects of this may seem easy to dodge by not incorporating linkage at the core product which is Windows but by letting the OEMs do the job. Microsoft may have found a workaround, essentially pulling the same trick it was using back in Netscape Era. It’s a trick where the software company instructs the OEMs and makes demands — using EULAs — as to how to set up the PCs so as to exclude rivals.
For further background on this, also consider the Microsoft/H-P collusions and H-P’s recent OOXML lobby. Those two companies rub each others’ back, for sure.
As trivially observed in the leaked E-mails that you can find here, none of this strategy is new. Microsoft and H-P engage in some sort of an ‘anti-Google pact’ (like Novell versus Red Hat et al), similar to that from the exclusionary deals with Dell and Compaq at the time — ones that required that the OEM puts Internet Explorer on the PC and also makes it more easily accessible to the user (desktop shortcuts and the likes of them).
Acer has been devoured by H-P and the new risk is no longer Netscape, so only technology and the players swapped roles. There is more critical information about this over at Linux Journal.
Microsoft representatives are quoted claiming 40% of searchers use the default search installed for their system. If true, the HP deal will give Microsoft an immediate audience of millions for it’s search offerings, though the company has declined to speculate on the amount of additional traffic and revenue expected from the deal.
Who is to blame here? Microsoft or H-P? Therein lies the mastery of this trickery. It’s a case of paying for market share rather than earning some in return technical merits, or even advertising. It’s hard to point fingers, too. █
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« Previous entries ·
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.