07.01.08
Posted in Novell, Opensuse, SLES/SLED, Review at 3:09 pm by Roy Schestowitz
The morning week+ after
It hasn’t been long since the important release of OpenSUSE 11.0. Novell is already trying to downplay the viability of OpenSUSE in order to sell its proprietary software-enhanced SLES/D. Watch this:
The differentiation for corporate customers is what comes next. Why is openSuSE not well suited for corporate use? It’s built by great people, with the purest of intent, and they will want to make things better. The problem is that corporate needs something more.
Given an in-house skilled person (or people), this just isn’t true. Moreover, support can be called from the outside even for a community-driven distribution. That’s how Free software works, and that’s how profit is extracted. Acquisition costs are belittled by maintenance costs no matter if the software deployed is Free or proprietary.
Unconvinced Users
The above example may seem like a bit of a stretch, but OpenSUSE’s woes needn’t be tied to Novell’s attempt to overshadow its presence. Quite a few people were displeased with the following elaborative report, whose conclusion is as follows.
openSUSE 11.0 is a difficult system to qualify. Highlights include good availability of current packages and YAST GUI configuration tools for some advanced features. However, these advantages are largely eclipsed by a chaotic, dysfunctional package management system and marginal performance. New Linux users with more complex network configurations or challenging hardware may be forced to use openSUSE due to its unique innovations in GUI system configuration. Yet, experienced and inexperienced users alike may find themselves increasingly frustrated by the grave lack of refinement in what is an otherwise capable Linux distribution.
Here is another interesting take from Steve Carl (BMC).
As usual, I have to ask the question, is OpenSUSE 11 a viable desktop for an enterprise. Not for geeks like me but for the average computer user that does not want to know anything about the computer itself: they just want a tool to get a job done.
The desktop itself is easy to use, easy to configure, easy to update, and a strong preview of what is to come in the next release of SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop). It has all sorts of standard Open Support, from Wikis to mailing lists to online doc.
There are still those who suggest that Ubuntu, for example, is an inch ahead.
In my own choice of categories and tests, and in my own judgment alone, Ubuntu 8.04 has beaten openSUSE 11 but only by a very slim margin. It only shows that openSUSE is worthy to be called the second most popular Linux distribution at the moment, and Ubuntu is still the cream of the crop.
Admittedly, it’s very user- and PC-dependent, but the reviewers in this case are experienced ones and their PCs are definitely not Linux-hostile.
Technical Assessment
We gave some examples of technical deficiencies a few days ago. There are some more minor peeves, which probably ought to be seen as bug reports. Here is one about suspend to RAM.
In my notebook computer, HP Compaq NX7300, the “suspend to RAM” functionality had worked without any problem in OpenSUSE 10.3, with kernel 2.6.22.5-31. However, it suddenly did not work after an upgrade to OpenSUSE 11, with kernel 2.6.25.5-1.1. I became nervous, tried to find out the solution, and fount out: downgrading kernel to 2.6.22.5-31.
This one is about Beagle-ReiserFS incompatibility. The former is Mono and the latter is better off forgotten.
I installed OpenSuse 11.0 today. Beware that if you install using reiserfs andl KDE your computer will freeze periodically in KDE. It took me 6 hours of debugging to figure out that beagle was causing the problems.
We apologise for being hard on OpenSUSE, but it’s clear that Novell continues to use OpenSUSE as a ‘free sample’ to lure users in to its Microsoft-taxed distribution. It’s also a case of free labour.
As a side note, I received my new PC just a few hours ago. Without going into specifics, the plan is to multi-boot it, with a 64-bit distribution that’s already installed and probably Mandriva 2008, which I’ve just downloaded. All the setups (e.g. need to buy another monitor tomorrow morning) are likely to affect activity on this site for a few more days. Summertime is a good time for readjustment. █
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06.28.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, Review at 5:16 am by Roy Schestowitz
The coverage from last week, which mostly comprised pointers, ought to be made a little more complete with the addition of the following:
Release Announcements
Read the rest of this entry »
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06.26.08
Posted in GNU/Linux, Novell, Opensuse, GNOME, KDE, Audio/Video, Review at 3:31 pm by Roy Schestowitz
A
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.
OpenSuSE 11: Channeling Vista
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.
Bruce on the lack on focus:
OpenSUSE 11: A Feature-Rich Distro in Search of Direction
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.
This guy too reckons it’s for power users:
openSUSE 11.0 x86_64 Review
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.
40 minutes with KDE4 under openSUSE 11.0
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.»
Fiddling phobia:
openSuSE 11.0 - A Closer Look
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.
Audio issues:
Resolving openSUSE 11.0 Sound Issue With Some Audigy Cards
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.
Achieve Zen with openSUSE 11.0 (i.e Get rid of pulse audio)
I’ve been having a lot of stability issues with openSUSE 11.0 lately and the majority of them boiled down to audio.
Jan shared some pet peeve which is to do with package management.
OpenSUSE - searching for programs and packages
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.
Moosy’s speed comparison (on fat and bloat):
Ubuntu faster then openSUSE?
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.
The impact of including an early version of KDE4?
Staying with openSUSE - Switching to GNOME
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.
The disconnect that newbies would find daunting:
Installed OpenSuse 11.0
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.
No match for Ubuntu yet:
openSUSE 11 installation this weekend
In summary: a great effort, lots of neat features. I’m not sure it would replace my hardy heron laptop yet. Looking forward to 11.1.
Minor complaint:
openSUSE 11.0
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. █
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02.15.08
Posted in Novell, SLES/SLED, IBM, Review at 11:31 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Take it from the man, Steven Vaughan, whose conclusion is that Dell’s laptops with GNU/Linux preloaded may be a better deal to many who consider SUSE on Lenovo Thinkpads.
But then Ohlhorst found some flies in the soup. First, one of the boot options was to bring SLED up with the Xen virtualization program. Whoops. It didn’t work.
I’m not sure what Lenovo thought it was doing by making that a boot option, anyway. I mean, if you want to use virtualization, you’re going to need to get in there and install another operating system and set its system settings first. Why not leave setting up Xen until it’s time to set up Xen, or, as I’d be more likely to do, install and set up VirtualBox?
Steven and Frank did not bash SUSE. They made an observation and the fault might be with Lenovo, not Novell. █
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12.18.07
Posted in Microsoft, OpenDocument, Open XML, Ecma, OpenOffice, Review, Australia at 6:51 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Writing specifications like you write your errors
To those who are here only for information about Novell — we apologise. It is important to understand, however, that Microsoft’s deal with Novell has a lot to do with OOXML and the remainder of the proprietary stack which is attached to it. Those issues are inseparable and they need to be understood in context.
We turn our attention to Australia and New Zealand where a few things are being reported. In New Zealand, the readability of OOXML raises concerns. Structure is not self-explanatory. It is made cryptic and shortened for performance gains (shades of binary formats for efficiency).
“This DIS contradicts the goals of XML and best practices. The designers of XML knew what they were doing because while we can remember what “c” means in this case it becomes problematic when we get hundreds or thousands of these shorthand references. …. OOXML has hundreds of these cryptic names.”
Later on you’ll find Microsoft bragging about superior performance (in terms of efficiency) in OOXML, as it already did before to discredit ODF (in OpenOffice.org). Well, XML has little or no value if its semantics (structure) is only ‘robot-readable’. Yes, binary dumps are also fast and maybe even fastest, but it all comes at a cost. The same goes for closed-source programs whose source code is messy. Watch this short article from last month:
Seriously, how many people are there in the world who are going to go “Hmmm, error code 8024402F … ahhh yes, I know what the problem is”? I can’t, and I’ve been neck deep in the Microsoft ecosystem for what is getting to be almost two decades.
This relates quite nicely to the discussion at hand. OOXML is very ad hoc and it is not suitable to become a standard like ODF, let alone (X)HTML or LATEX.
Here is a recent report about the advisory group in New Zealand:
In September 2007, the European Computer Manufacturers’ Association (ECMA) 376 Open Office XML specification was not approved as an international standard when voted on by members of the international standards joint technical committee No 1 (JTC1). Standards New Zealand, as a member of JTC1 with the responsibility to vote on behalf of New Zealand, voted against adopting the specification as an international standard.
The situation in Austrlia sounds very reasonable, with the exception of characters like Rick Jelliffe, who gets free trips and money for Wikipedia edits that support Microsoft. It’s a strategic thing with a long history. █
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03.09.07
Posted in GNU/Linux, Opensuse, Ubuntu, Review at 2:12 am by Roy Schestowitz
Opensuse is a fine Linux distribution. I can say this as a long-time SuSE user. However, increasingly it is faced with challenges posed by other vendors which — at least to some of us — are presently perceived as less harmful to the broader community. They thrive in a more positive and friendly image, regardless of how much they actually contribute to the Linux mainline (new or existing packages).
The scale of companies plays a role as well. While long-term sustainability is an important factor, some people refuse to trust companies which project vanity and/or take control of a distribution’s direction (e.g. community- versus customer-driven). Compiz is a fine example of this.
Novell is clearly listening. In fact, it has just kicked off a survey for openSUSE users. But what happens when those who contribute to openSUSE (as I used to do) feel as though they were backstabbed and also portrayed negatively? It’s a blame game which involves OpenSUSE developers/testers/assistants/documentation volunteers, some of whom frown upon actions taken by the management of Novell.
While we don’t take pleasure in seeing Opensuse sinking in reviews while Ubuntu trumps many of its rivals, it does make you think. Ubuntu becomes the codebase of many other Linux distributions. Here is yet another reminder that Opensuse needs to get its act together fast. It is no longer the distribution of choice, which is a status it could probably boast a couple of years ago.
(K)Ubuntu to OpenSuSe - My Experience
Installing softwares. YAST is not easy to use if you are used to apt-get or synaptic. With Ubuntu, you’ll have the basic repos
added and you can just uncomment other repos in the sources.list file if you want to use them. When I opened the list in YAST, there was nothing there.
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02.04.07
Posted in Law, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, FUD, Deals, Samba, Fork, GPL, Courtroom, Action, Patent Covenant, Interoperability, FOSS, Review, Kernel at 12:32 am by Shane Coyle
So that’s what "GNU⁄Linux" is all about…
Unfortunately, the Novell Ban on Distributing Linux piece of FUD has really caught on and is being repeated ad infinitum around the internet. The article implies that the FSF is coming together to review the Microvell deal and decide if it is in violation of the GPL, and whether Novell should retain the right to distribute Linux is to be decided in the coming weeks.
As was pointed out earlier, this is not exactly what is happening - the FSF is not reviewing Novell specifically and determining if they are complying with the current GPL, with the intent of pulling their license. What is happening, however, is a new draft of the upcoming GPLv3 is in the works. In the coming weeks, the FSF will be working on the language that will address the Microsoft-Novell patent covenant and its "workaround" of the GPLv2 intent.
Basically, the FSF is closing the loophole exploited by the Microsoft-Novell deal, after which it will be up to Microvell to decide if they wish to comply with the new license terms and conditions. At this time, the FSF is not pursuing the Microvell deal under GPLv2, and apparently they are conceding that the deal is GPLv2 compliant (or at least not worth litigating).
Another point worth mentioning, is that Linux (the kernel) is almost certainly remaining under GPLv2 for the forseeable future, so even if Novell is unable or unwilling to comply with GPLv3, they will still apparently be able to distribute "Linux" under GPLv2 for some time.
What will be moving to GPLv3 in short order after its approval are projects like gcc and other fundamental packages that are controlled by the FSF, in addition to Samba - the very project which provides Novell’s coveted Windows interoperability in the first place.
So, while Novell will be able to distribute Linux for the forseeable future, it’s the GNU that Novell will be losing if they can’t comply with GPLv3, requiring them to maintain their own forks.
Of course, Novell has already pledged to comply with GPLv3 in whatever form it should take, so I suppose this is all much ado about nothing, right?
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01.23.07
Posted in Opensuse, Review at 7:18 pm by Roy Schestowitz
Here at BoycottNovell we have adopted this tradition of occasionally posting SLED/SLES/Opensuse reviews. Two reviews have caught our attention since the last installment. We are not being selective as far as these reviews are concerned. The intent is to point out every decent and elaborate review that’s found.
1. OpenSuse 10.2 Review
I looked at OpenSuse 10.2 as a Win2k replacement. I’ve been impressed with Suse over the years so I was looking forward to see what Novell brought to the table with 10.2. Like I said before, I am not going to judge a distribution on its setup process (OS installation, mp3 setup, flash setup, adding printer, etc), however I am going to mention some installation pitfalls I ran into during the 10.2 install.
2. openSUSE 10.2
Conclusion
openSUSE is a stable, fast and very powerful distribution, capable of anything Linux without having to do a lot of extra work, as there are RPM-packages for virtually everything. It is not the most user-friendly distribution, as the installation gives the user some tough choices (although hitting next will give a good default, I think such options should be hidden away from the beginners) and playing DVDs and listening to MP3s or WMAs, or watching live-content from the web, is not possible without installing unofficial packages. Finding and installing these packages feels like breaking the law, as there’s warnings all over the official documentation warning agains making such content possible - but it isn’t illegal, unless you live in the USA.
If you are a power-user you will not feel in any way cheated for options. Even though YaST is a GUI for managing virtually everything, it doesn’t hide any options, and even if you feel like hacking your configurations on your own, feel free to do so. If something goes wrong, it’s easy to restore configurations with YaST. Some parts, especially the package-manager, is quite slow as it does a lot of unnecessary tasks before and after you install anything (like it always updates your list of fonts, even when you haven’t installed or removed any fonts).
If you’re a beginner there’s easier distributions out there, but not necessarily better, as openSUSE is fast and very stable, but it’s just not that intuitive.
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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.