Slashdot Mirror

Aim Here writes "According to Novell's website, and the Salt Lake Tribune, the jury in the SCO v. Novell trial has returned a verdict: Novell owns the Unix copyrights. This also means that SCO's case against IBM must surely collapse too, and likely the now bankrupt SCO group itself. It's taken 7 years, but the US court system has eventually done the right thing ..." No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this.

blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.

CWmike writes "A hedge fund that is already one of Novell's largest shareholders offered on Tuesday to acquire the struggling, cash-rich enterprise software maker for $2 billion. The unsolicited offer, from New York-based Elliot Associates L.P., is for $5.75 per share in cash, a dollar per share more than Novell's closing price Tuesday of $4.75. The offer caused Novell's stock to leap 29% to $6.15 in after-hours trading. Because Novell is so cash-rich — it had $991 million in cash and equivalents at the end of January (PDF) — Elliott says the deal values Novell as an enterprise alone at about $1 billion."

Etrigoth writes "After the recent announcement of Silverlight by Microsoft at their Mix event in Vegas, Miguel de Icaza galvanised his team of developers in the Mono group at Novell to create a Linux implementation, a so-called 'Moonlight'. Remarkably, they achieved this in 21 Days. Although they were first introduced to Silverlight at the Las Vegas Mix, de Icaza was invited by a representative of Microsoft France for a 10 minute demonstration at the Paris Re-Mix 07 keynote conference, should they have anything to show.
Joshua, a blogger for Microsoft has confirmed that the Mono team did not know anything about Silverlight 1.1 before its launch. Other members of this team have blogged about this incredible achievement, Moonlight hack-a-thon. It's worth noting from a developer perspective that Moonlight is not Mono and doesn't require Mono to work"

Readers VE3OGG and FFFFHALTFFFF write in with three pieces of a global picture that is emerging of governments and corporations moving away from Microsoft and towards open source. First, France: the French automaker Peugot Citroen has announced that over the next several years they will be integrating up to 20,000 Novell SUSE desktops as well as 2,500 SUSE servers into their facilities. (Let's hope that, in Novell, Peugeot Citroen hasn't bought a lemon.) Next, Sweden: the Swedish Armed Forces has made a decision to migrate its Windows NT servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Finally, Russia. VE3OGG writes: "It would seem that after the recent Russian piracy debacle that could see a school headmaster jailed in a Siberian work camp for purchasing pirated copies of Windows for his school, the Ministry of Education in Russia has decided that the school boards will no longer be purchasing any commercial software."

asv108 writes, "On the Hula general mailing list today, it was announced that Novell is no longer providing full-time developers to Hula. While the project will continue, it appears that Novell is not committed to developing a viable open-source alternative to MS Exchange. The Hula project was announced in February 2005 with much fanfare."

Azul writes "Ron Hovsepian, Novell's CEO, has posted an open letter to the Community, where he explicitly states Novell's disagreement with Steve Ballmer's claims of Linux infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property. From the letter: 'We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Novell is providing Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center with confidential access to the legal terms of the Novell-Microsoft partnership, allowing to organization to verify if the deal is compatible with the GPL2 and GPL3 licenses. Moglen in the past has alleged that the patent license between the two companies could be in violation with section 7 of the GPL. Novell on Tuesday published a document on its website, explaining that they circumvented the GPL provisions by providing a patent license to the end user rather than between the two companies."

An anonymous reader writes "Novell launched a Linux/Open Source story page where everyone can briefly describe how he/she helps pushing Linux or Open Source forward. For every submission a marker is set on a world map. You can also win prices, among them, although yet not mentioned on the page, 50 SLED 10 licenses."

MrHoolio writes "SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 has been officially released. This long-awaited/anticipated release is a make-or-break release for Novell. It promises not only a new sleek improved interface but also increased productivity with stability and less worry about viruses and the like. The pricing for the Desktop is $50 a year if you want product updates and support. Otherwise ... like other linux distros you can download it for free, but with no support."

Dysfnctnl85 asks: "As a follow up to the previous discussion 'Alternatives to Citrix Remote Computing?', I've hit another brick wall in my quest to enhance the way my company does remote computing. Right now I've setup Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 R2 on two 64-bit machines with 16gb of RAM each. Before I can setup Presentation Server 4, I need to install the Novell client to allow access to our NetWare servers. After doing some research on Google, and hopping forums on the Novell Support boards, I've determined that Novell has no plans to release a 64-bit client for any Microsoft OS until Vista launches." Has anyone managed to get VMWare, Citrix and 64-bit Windows working together? "Now I'm sure there are other companies out there in a similar situation (as noted on the forums and Google Groups), so I then decided to look into the virtualization market to see if I can still make my dream happen. I've been emailing my Citrix rep who in turn has been speaking with a Citrix engineer who is currently training with VMWare, coincidentally. I'm wondering if anyone has successfully ran a VMWare + Citrix solution in order to fully take advantage of dual 64bit procs, a Windows 64-bit OS, and 16GB of RAM. I was thinking of running 2 Citrix Servers within VMWare to handle maybe 8GB, effectively making 4 public Citrix servers, but I'm not sure what the best solution would be."

MrHoolio writes "Yesterday morning Novell publicly annouced the free availability of release candidate 3 of the SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 products. Both the server edition and the desktop edition work with XGL out of the box. A serious step forward in the Linux desktop market, Novell claims this will go head-to-head to rival Windows on the enterprise level. It implements a whole new menu system on top of Gnome that is very well thought-out. It has incredible hardware support for a Linux distro."

jht writes "Arriving in my Inbox a few minutes ago (I'm a Novell Partner), was the announcement that effective immediately, CEO Jack Messman and CFO Joe Tibbetts are out of jobs at Novell. Existing president Ron Hovsepian was named CEO, and an interim CFO was named as well. Messman will stay on the board thru the end of October, though. A webcast of the conference call should be available shortly at www.novell.com/company/ir." ukhackster links to ZDNet's coverage of the shakeup, writing "It looks like [Messman's] been blamed for Novell's poor performance in the Linux space versus Red Hat. But can Linux ever be a real cash cow?"

jht writes "Arriving in my Inbox a few minutes ago (I'm a Novell Partner), was the announcement that effective immediately, CEO Jack Messman and CFO Joe Tibbetts are out of jobs at Novell. Existing president Ron Hovsepian was named CEO, and an interim CFO was named as well. Messman will stay on the board thru the end of October, though. A webcast of the conference call should be available shortly at www.novell.com/company/ir." ukhackster links to ZDNet's coverage of the shakeup, writing "It looks like [Messman's] been blamed for Novell's poor performance in the Linux space versus Red Hat. But can Linux ever be a real cash cow?"

Arcidius asks: "It's been a year and still nobody seems to have a real solution for getting USB devices to work under Windows XP in an Novell environment. If you're running Windows XP and Novell servers (NetWare 6 for us), Windows XP will show all drives available, even though usually many are have been drive mapped. When you plug in an external hard drive or USB device, Windows maps it to the first free drive letter, usually F:, but since Novell has mapped it already, you can't access the drive. The fix so far has been to manually remap the memory key to a free letter, such as B:, and this has to be done on every machine. Either that, or switch your first mapped drive, which is more of a problem in most environments. Since Novell can't figure out a solution, (and Microsoft obviously doesn't care), I throw it to Slashdot. Does anyone have a real, network wide solution?"

Tony Tony Chopper writes "The team from Kororaa who brought us a GUI based Gentoo installer have just released the first live CD to use xgl technology. From Kororaa.org, the lead developer Chris writes 'Today I am happy to release a Kororaa Live CD showcasing Xgl technology.' The response so far have been incredibly positive, an article at tuxmachines.org is glowing with much praise and few complaints. For those who love eye-candy but don't want to mess with their existing installs, this is the perfect opportunity to see what Xgl is about. The torrent can be downloaded from LinuxTracker."

soren42 writes "It appears that Novell has decided to rename their enterprise desktop line SUSE, once again. According to an announcement at CeBIT, Novell will be releasing the next version of their desktop product under the name SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop - ditching the moniker Novell Linux Desktop. Naming aside, it looks like the features will be there to make it a strong desktop competitor."

soren42 writes "It appears that Novell has decided to rename their enterprise desktop line SUSE, once again. According to an announcement at CeBIT, Novell will be releasing the next version of their desktop product under the name SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop - ditching the moniker Novell Linux Desktop. Naming aside, it looks like the features will be there to make it a strong desktop competitor."

An anonymous reader writes "As a result of over 14,000 votes since the beginning of January, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, Dreamweaver, iTunes, and Macromedia Flash are currently the top 5 'most wanted' Windows/MacOS-only applications in Novell's online survey. From comments made by the survey participants, Novell has also listed suggested substitutes for each of the five. What do readers think of these suggestions?"

hamfactorial writes "Novell has announced the public availability of the Xgl code, an openGL accelerated X server layer. Available binaries ought to be coming soon for distributions running the modular X.org 7.0 release (possibly 6.9, though unconfirmed). A temporary page for Xgl information is up at the openSUSE website. This is the same code that was running in the Novell Linux Desktop 10 preview videos as seen earlier. Further information is also available at Miguel De Icaza's blog."

zenboomerang writes "It looks like Novell is trying to hit the hammer on the top of software developers heads and try and get them to port their applications directly to Linux. With help from the public they will try to pursuade the management of the most popular programs picked to get into the 21st Century and do some Linux testing. It seems to me to be a good idea and all it needs is a little help from the community."

littlepill writes "It looks as though email clients are vital for Linux to succeed in the desktop battle. ZDNet says, "the lack of a powerful email application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop". So, even though Novell's Evolution is one viable and valid product, it seems that there is a clear "message to application vendors to focus on developing a quality email application for the Linux desktop"." I'm unconvinced- I think webmail will soon be replacing client side readers for all but power users.

Last week on Slashdot you saw a (Microsoft-funded) research study on Windows vs. (Novell) Linux reliability by Dr.Herbert Thompson. Novell disagreed with the study's conclusions. So did most Slashdot readers. Thompson's work been mentioned on Slashdot before, especially his famous five-line script that could change electronic voting machine results and his novel, The Mezonic Agenda: Hacking the Presidency. He's a real, genuine-article computer security expert (and regular Slashdot reader) who is happy to put on his flame-resistant suit and discuss his Microsoft vs. Linux study with you. So ask whatever you like, one question per post. We'll send him 10 of the highest-moderated questions and publish his answers next Monday. He'll jump into the discussion then, which ought to make it rather lively.

sp3298622 writes "Novell is releasing primary desktop research, including over 200 videos and analysis of usability tests, at betterdesktop.openSUSE.org. Vice president of collaboration and desktop engineering for Novell, Nat Friedman: As a programmer, it's sometimes difficult to know how ordinary people with no technical experience are reacting to your software. Linux people tend to know other Linux people. In these usability tests, we selected test subjects who were experienced with Windows, but who had never heard of Linux, and asked them to perform basic tasks using the Linux desktop."

O0o0Oblubb!O0o0O writes "Today, Novell released SuSE 10.0 OSS for download. Product highlights include kernel 2.6.13, gcc 4.0.2, glibc 2.3.5, improved boot times and Xen 3. Torrents are available for the i386, ppc and x86_64 versions. The downloadable OSS edition lacks some packages for licensing reasons of which some, like Java, can be installed via package repository."

corso64 writes "Ohio Linux Fest 2005, a free conference/event for Linux and OSS enthusiasts, looks to be every bit as good, if not better than Ohio Linux Fest 2004. Last year, IBM, Novell, Apache, Beowulf, Mozilla, along with Jon "Maddog" Hall made Ohio Linux Festival 2004 a huge success along with tons of swag, freebies, and door prizes (including a Linus-autographed cdrom of the original source release of Linux). This year IBM, Novell, Apache, Digium, KDE and others will be doing sessions on Asterisk, KDE, Digital Forensics,Unified Threat Management, Ubuntu, Server Farms and lots of other topics. Check it out this October 1st!"

jambarama writes "Newsforge reports Novell will be open sourcing SUSE professional under the name OpenSUSE. Is Novell following in the footsteps of Red Hat Inc., with its Fedora Core Linux distribution, or continuing its own open source policy as it has in the past as with YAST?" Note that it looks like the opensuse.org site is not yet up.

nigelr writes "The New Zealand Ministry of Education has signed a deal with Novell New Zealand to provide SUSE Linux desktop licenses in schools. The article claims that while the price for a desktop license now matches what Microsoft charge, the new deal will significantly reduce the over all cost due to reduced charges for existing Novell products used in schools around the country."

amorelock asks: "I manage a small group of 4-6 Linux software engineers / developers that are part of a larger engineering organization. Our IT department has finally, after several months of pushing-back, decided to support our Linux workstations. The have requested that we use an off the shelf distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain (we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience). We are evaluating both Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Redhat Enterprise WS. Have any fellow Slashdot folks had experience with either of these two distributions, and if so, what did you like or dislike about either of them?"

twener writes "Nine weeks after the official release of SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional Novell has made available the FTP edition for everyone as a 4.2GB DVD ISO image (both i586 and x86_64) or 5 CD images (stripped-down, i586 only) on their mirrors. Additionally, all until-now missing RPMs have been uploaded, so you can also do a network installation using the 57MB netinstall ISO." Update: 06/27 19:37 GMT by T : Yes, that's RPMs, not RMPs. Sorry!

twener writes "Nine weeks after the official release of SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional Novell has made available the FTP edition for everyone as a 4.2GB DVD ISO image (both i586 and x86_64) or 5 CD images (stripped-down, i586 only) on their mirrors. Additionally, all until-now missing RPMs have been uploaded, so you can also do a network installation using the 57MB netinstall ISO." Update: 06/27 19:37 GMT by T : Yes, that's RPMs, not RMPs. Sorry!

Nagappan writes "The GNU/Linux Desktop Testing Project (GNU/LDTP) is aimed at producing high quality test automation framework and cutting-edge tools that can be used to test GNU/Linux Desktop and improve it. It uses the 'Accessibility' libraries to poke through the application's user interface. The framework has tools to generate 'AppMap' by reading through the user interface components of an application. The framework also has tools to record test-cases based on user-selection on the application. As of now, GNU/LDTP can test any GNOME application which is accessibility enabled: Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, any Java application (UI based on swing) and KDE 4.0 applications based on QT 4.0. We encourage you to join the project and help us to create robust, reliable and stable test tool/framework for Linux Desktops. Thanks to Luis Villa for trying to integrate GNU/LDTP with GNOME tinderbox."

G Money writes "Novell announced today that they acquired Immunix, a company the produces an alternative mandatory access control solution to SELinux using the LSM. For anyone who hasn't used both Immunix and SELinux, the difference between configuring them is like night and day. There's even a YaST module for configuration. (Disclaimer: I'm on the Defcon Immunix CTF team.)"

SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin has published a comprehensive review of the latest Libranet release. New in this release are an improved installer and revamped/modernized AdminMenu that rivals Mandriva's MCC and SUSE's YaST. Aside from major desktop versions lagging behing a version or two, this release easily puts Libranet in the same league as Ubuntu, and the review has sparked some "Ubuntu vs. Libranet" arguements so far, one on the Libranet forum itself. Check it out for yourself. The review is complete with many screenshots as well as Flash movies of the AdminMenu & installer in action."

InnerPhalanx writes "Today, SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional was released. After submitting the 9.2 update, I decided I should submit another article. The suggested retail price is $99.95 US. An update version is available for $59.95 US, in case you have an earlier version of SuSE Pro. More information, especially news about the product itself, is available here. As usual, there's a Live DVD release of SuSE 9.3 Pro as well as the 9.2 Pro Evaluation Version DVD ISO."

linuxbeta writes "With the recent SUSE LINUX 9.3 Live DVD ISO released, we get a sneak peek. (screenshots) of this much anticipated OS update. Cool updates in 9.3 includes Firefox 1.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Gimp 2.2, Beagle. Xen, VoIP client, and more." And while Debian's Sarge isn't here yet (give Branden Robinson a chance to find his plush new office!), wrochal points out that the fifth update to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 ("Woody" ) has arrived. 3.0 (r5) "mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems." Also, four packages were removed, three for license violations.

linuxbeta writes "With the recent SUSE LINUX 9.3 Live DVD ISO released, we get a sneak peek. (screenshots) of this much anticipated OS update. Cool updates in 9.3 includes Firefox 1.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Gimp 2.2, Beagle. Xen, VoIP client, and more." And while Debian's Sarge isn't here yet (give Branden Robinson a chance to find his plush new office!), wrochal points out that the fifth update to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 ("Woody" ) has arrived. 3.0 (r5) "mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems." Also, four packages were removed, three for license violations.

llywelynelysium writes "Mad Penguin has an excellent review of the upcoming SuSE 9.3 Professional release. The review is mostly positive, commenting on SUSE's improved speed, improved Gnome suppport, inclusion of Xen, and interestingly, the use of Firefox as the default browser. On the other hand, the review states that Novell has futher crippled the multimedia capabilities of their distribution by removing MP3 playback support. SUSE scores three stars in the end."

An anonymous reader submits "Computer World has an article about Novell Linux Desktop 10, which was just announced at Brainshare, that it plans to compete directly with Windows. One of the biggest things about NLD 10 is that it will have the desktop search engine Beagle as a feature." Also from Brainshare, Joe Barr writes on NewsForge about the significance of Novell's ongoing (multi-year) transition to Linux for all of its 6,000 desktops. Consultants and software sellers of all stripes won't soon run out of TCO arguments for the products they want to push, but Novell claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees alone.

phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"

phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"

phenix asks: "With the new release of Novell Linux Desktop, and the upcoming release of Sun JDS3, I am curious to hear how these two suites, and their underlying enterprise infrastructures (JES and OES) compare. Specifically, I am interested in their ease of management/deployment in these areas: directory services, productivity (office) applications, centralized application serving, centralized document storage, groupware, and remote application installation. All of these, of course, without the use of Windows products like Exchange and Windows technologies like Active Directory. Is there a better alternative?"

cfelde writes "eWeek reports that Novell launched a major new release of its ZENworks Linux Management software at CeBIT on Friday, with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers. ZENworks 7 Linux Management adds remote control, imaging, hardware and software inventory, a Web console, and ZENworks' automated policy management to make it a full life-cycle management suite."

cfelde writes "eWeek reports that Novell launched a major new release of its ZENworks Linux Management software at CeBIT on Friday, with the aim of bringing management of Linux desktops and servers on par with that of Windows desktops and servers. ZENworks 7 Linux Management adds remote control, imaging, hardware and software inventory, a Web console, and ZENworks' automated policy management to make it a full life-cycle management suite."

sp3298622 writes "Nat Friedman, co-founder of Ximian, expresses his excitement about the Hula collaboration Server, talks about the plugins in development for Evolution 2.2, the potential of XGL and the revolution of the Linux Desktop. The interview is a 30MB MP3 file."

H0ek writes "Seems Novell has announced at LinuxWorld Expo that they will be releasing 200,000+ lines of code to the community in the form of a project named Hula(TM). The project is derived from the Novell NetMail product and provides web-based email and calendaring. Seems our boy Nat Friedman has some info on this, too. If you were fortunate enough to get a MyRealBox email account, you will probably know what NetMail is like."

H0ek writes "Seems Novell has announced at LinuxWorld Expo that they will be releasing 200,000+ lines of code to the community in the form of a project named Hula(TM). The project is derived from the Novell NetMail product and provides web-based email and calendaring. Seems our boy Nat Friedman has some info on this, too. If you were fortunate enough to get a MyRealBox email account, you will probably know what NetMail is like."

H0ek writes "Seems Novell has announced at LinuxWorld Expo that they will be releasing 200,000+ lines of code to the community in the form of a project named Hula(TM). The project is derived from the Novell NetMail product and provides web-based email and calendaring. Seems our boy Nat Friedman has some info on this, too. If you were fortunate enough to get a MyRealBox email account, you will probably know what NetMail is like."

ssbljk writes "Czech Post is the second largest employer in the Czech Republic with nearly 3,400 post offices and 40,000 employees. The company delivers nearly a billion letters and receives more than 100 million postal orders each year. Czech Post relies on APOST, a customized system used by 20,000 employees for all postal operations. APOST had been running on a range of operating systems including DOS and Microsoft Windows NT, but reached a point where running in a proprietary environment was proving too costly. With a disparate environment across 3,400 locations, Czech Post was experiencing increased administration costs, as well as downtime and security issues. In just 10 months, Czech Post installed the new SUSE LINUX-based APOST system on 4,000 servers at 3,400 post offices across the country, as well as at 12,000 client terminals used by 20,000 employees. The company now has a centralized infrastructure with support for remote monitoring that will significantly reduce administration costs. "

IgorMrBean writes "Just before xmas, Novell has released their public beta of Open Enterprise Server. Novell had promise this a couple months ago, and the product seems to work well for beta... Kernel choice for OES : Linux 2.6 kernel - From SuSE Enterprise Server 9, and Netware 6.5 kernel. Also, many improvements for Netware 6.5SP3, including BASH support, PHP5 and more. Download details here (pdf)."