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For those that are interested.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/webcast.html

After a quick glance over the comments here does anyone else get the feeling "Ask Slashdot" isn't really working? I'd think that there were quite a few migration stories out there, at least from local governments trying to save money (http://www.novell.com/success/jefferson.html) or just Googling linux success story...

I'm not getting a warm and fuzzy about possibly starting a business based on this (an idea I was toying with)...

Does anybody still use EXT2/3 on Linux?

Are you serious?

According to this (and other) up to date articles http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/File_System_Prime r
ext3 is the most popular Linux file system

Have a look at the 'technical' table in this article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_d istributions
and you will see that ext2/3 is the default for about three-quarters of all major distros which have a default (i.e. ignoring those with no or unknown defaults)

Does GIMP support 16-bit color/CMYK separation?

Does Thunderbird interoperate well with our exchange server?

Does Firefox work on most webpages?

Does OpenOffice interoperate well with MS Office files?

Check your facts

Seems to me Groupwise http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/ already has this -- email in your mailbox is encrypted and can only be read after logging in. Logging in as admin doesn't give you read-rights to the users's mailboxes. As long as you keep passwords confidential, your mail (once it reaches the mail server) is also confidential.

Did Novell ever get around to porting Novell Storage Services [NSS] to Linux?

Yup...it happened with their initial release of Open Enterprise Server, well over a year ago. OES is built upon SLES9.

That being said, we found the initial releases to be a bit buggy, and performance was way off what we've come to expect with Netware. However, things have improved considerably since the initial release, and we're running four OES 1.0/SP2 Linux servers with NSS now for sites with moderate loads (file/print for up to 100 users.) Benchmarks show things are still a bit slower than Netware, but not enough that the users are complaining.

The other issue with NSS on OES Linux - backup support. Relatively few vendors have supported backup solutions, compared to "standard" Linux filesystems. Standard backup tools handle the file data just fine, but they won't capture the NSS extended attributes - trustees, ownership, etc. There are backup solutions that work well, but they aren't free.

Good news is, it's allowing us ot migrate off of Netware, without giving up the Novell services that work very well for us. It's also transparent to the users - with NSS on OES Linux, the servers look and behave just like a Netware server to client PC's.

Yes, it is opensourced from Novell.

Here's a link to the Novell Forge: http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?app armor

SELinux is out there too, but quite a bit more difficult to configure, even as a distro. AppArmor can be added to any system you have easily enough.

-m

Sounds like that need Novell's AppAmor software. It is an application-level firewall. You could take firefox and make a firewall around it so it can't do anything that you don't want it to (remote code execution, blah blah). Interestingly as well, you can wrap up apache with it to prevent web server hacks and whatnot. Not sure if you can put it around the kernel to prevent rootkits from installing, but if you cover your points of entrance (browser, e-mail, file sharing, etc) you should be pretty well covered.

Even comes with the base SLED/SLES10 and I believe will be in openSUSE and other distros soon.

More here: http://www.novell.com/linux/security/apparmor/

Too bad they chose RedHat for those laptops--they wouldn't be worrying about this!

-m

Not quite.

http://support.novell.com/linux/psdb/byproduct.htm l

Support for SuSE 8 Pro only if you are paying for support.
Support for SuSE 9 Pro not available.

I second that. While at Ohio Linux Fest this weekend I was lucky enough to attend Ted Haeger's talk on "Desktop Innovation at Novell". I am excited about Linux on the desktop again. I already use Linux as my desktop OS, but it just seemed kinda blah until seeing Ted's presentation. The work that Novell is putting into SLED and openSUSE is really cool, and they are giving back to the community at the same time (beagle and f-spot for example). While Ubuntu is nice, don't count Novell out when it comes to desktop linux.

For more info check out Ted's blog http://reverendted.wordpress.com/ and his podcast http://www.novell.com/openaudio/.

Disclaimer: I do not have any association to Novell or Ted, other than he is a kewl guy to talk to and knows his stuff.

I really hate this popular Slashdot myth that viruses only exist because OSes are designed improperly. No, wrong. ... There isn't an OS level defense for this short of an Orwellian trusted computing scheme. If I sent you a version of Apache with malicious code in it and you installed it as root, I could do whatever I wanted. Doesn't matter how secure your OS is, you gave it the permissions it needs.
</snip>

This is why SELinux and App Armor exist. With a proper SELinux or App Armor setup you could install Apache as root and all it will be allowed to do is what Apache does normally. So, it would only be allowed to read the /etc/httpd directory and the /var/www directory. It would only be able to write to the /var/log/httpd directory and listen on port 80 and 443. So, this could prevent an exploit in Apache from taking over the rest of your system.

Admittedly this example wouldn't help a desktop user. But, there is no reason why SELinux or App Armor couldn't help a desktop user. One example would be if Firefox was locked down to only allow downloads to the ~/Downloads directory or something like that. Now any hole in firefox would only be able to damage your ~/Downloads directory and presumably your firefox cache directory or something. It wouldn't be able to delete ~/Pictures and ~/Music. The browser example is kind of complicated because it has so many tasks these days. But, the point is that you can prevent a lot of problems by employing some kind of mandatory access control system.

Oh, and it really isn't that hard to use one of these systems either. Yeah, they can be pretty nasty if you really get into it (especially SELinux). But, for a desktop user there really isn't anything to worry about. I use Fedora Core 5 at work and at home and I've kept SELinux enabled on both systems. App Armor is really nice to use for the purposes of locking down a server system in this way. SELinux is more generic but it is much more complex than App Armor.

Novell / SuSe's SLED 10 does that already. It holds multiple desktops, and lets you flip through them quickly also.
I've looked at both, and while some things uniquely windows won't run on SLED10, I find it much more stable and secure. Granted, Vista is still in development, and SLED10 is in production, but still. I have no plans to go Vista. I'm sticking with SLED10, as it's the first real *nix I could put on my laptop and still do all my work on. I work in an environment with a Novell backbone (100+ servers), Citrix/App Center (600+ servers), and mixed Unix environment (100+ server). I have to support apps on all 3, and this fit the gap nicely for me.

Installation info : http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/SLED10:_Installat ion
Novell Main site : http://www.novell.com/linux/

Novell / SuSe's SLED 10 does that already. It holds multiple desktops, and lets you flip through them quickly also.
I've looked at both, and while some things uniquely windows won't run on SLED10, I find it much more stable and secure. Granted, Vista is still in development, and SLED10 is in production, but still. I have no plans to go Vista. I'm sticking with SLED10, as it's the first real *nix I could put on my laptop and still do all my work on. I work in an environment with a Novell backbone (100+ servers), Citrix/App Center (600+ servers), and mixed Unix environment (100+ server). I have to support apps on all 3, and this fit the gap nicely for me.

Installation info : http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/SLED10:_Installat ion
Novell Main site : http://www.novell.com/linux/

Thus far, the most startling difference has been that people here appear to try to sell open source software, rather than making it available for free.

Are you really that surprised?

https://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/
https://shop.mysql.com/
http://www.novell.com/linux/
http://www.cafepress.com/officialgentoo/1227454

etc...

And if you prefer the free approach:

ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/

You only need machines with 32-48 MB system memory for LTSP, machines with 4-8 MB are a bit stuck although they could be purposed with SVGALIB VNCviewer or SVGALIB rdesktop. It should be possible to acquire suitable machines for under $100 used, or $150 new.

To minimize the hardware needed and improve administration you might want to try running Edubuntu (a Linux terminal server specialised for education) diskless, and use a directory to store all account information in. There is a directory server project dedicated for small Linux terminal server environments to act as a boot manager for LTSP clients and servers, and account store for users. Team this up with m0n0wall and FreeNAS and you have a complete solution.

"the DoD *really* doesn't like that they don't know who wrote the software, and they also don't like the lack of a central point of contact"

To find out who wrote the software, just read the license agreement ..

Novell Software License Agreement
Red Hat Agreements
Cleversafe Commercial License
Digium End-User License Agreement

"CCEVS evaluation is really REALLY expensive and takes frickin' forever. Now, this is no barrier to Microsoft, which has had enough money and time to get Windows .. evaluated"

"Open source products tend to come with a list of disclaimers as long as your arm"

"Microsoft warrants that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying materials for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of receipt" - XP EUAL

Microsoft .. provide the Software .. AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all other warranties .. of reliability .. of lack of viruses .. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE - XP EUAL

was Re:What the DoD objects to

"Did you notice the part in the video where he wrote 'vendors' above the circle? He didn't say 'most companies' but technology vendors. Clue in."

The quote given shows him as saying the majority of companies. What was he saying when he wote 'vendors'. At what point did he mention his 'donut economic theory'. I didn't see the show that's why I asked for a transcript.

I've seen Red Hat making money, but not 'down stream developers' and 'everybody' making money. Do you have any real examples of 'everybody' making money in the same way as Red Hat or to argue further your point, Windows developers? Give some numbers.

Subject shuffle and word shuffle at the same time. Never said 'in the same way', possible unwise use of the word 'developers'. In relation to Red Hat these companies use Open Source and make money. Amazon, AOL, BP , Cisco, Dell, Morgan Stanley, Nortel, Siemens, UBS. This URL lists a number of technology companies that partner with Novell. They must be getting some benefit out of it and making money at the same time.

Sure it's possible for Windows developers to make money. But my point is that Hilf is wrong in his assertion that companies advocate Open Source solely to get customers and that by implication, Microsoft and only Microsoft offers a platform where developers can make money. What other reading can be made from this statement?

"Microsoft offers developers a platform where they can make money selling their software" - Bill Hilf

It seems as though Microsoft is / will have it's security products built into Vista, and will most likely build them into the TCP/IP stack at some level. Here is what most people seem to be ignoring here, and it's pretty simple.

As it always has been, you can choose to use or disable any part of any feature in Windows. As it sits now with RC1, you can enable / disable features at will. Wireless networking configuration is built into Windows XP, but as everybody here knows who has a wireless network device of some sort, upon driver / software installation, that application takes over the duties of the Windows feature, usually by default. I don't know why anybody would have a reason to think that this would be any different from having a firewall in the OS, which, at the request of the user (by way of installation) gets replaced by some other product. We'll leave the discussion about inferiority for another time.

People really should stop talking about a feature of Vista as if its sure to be some set in stone incumberance, and it most likely will not be.

Oh, but it's built into TCP/IP! Anybody here ever installed the Novell client in Windows? Ever see what it does to your network protocols? Microsoft has said time and time again that it is keeping with backwards compatibility, are we naive enough to think that this won't include clients, protocols, craptastic software firewalls and anti-virus-viruses? Not so much. For those of you that need to experience a Novell client install for yourselves, go ahead. It's uninstallable. http://download.novell.com/SummaryFree.jsp?buildid =l1o2uFAj23U~/

The strength of Linux is in it's stable and secure kernel and low-level "plumbing." The same as BSD. An OS that includes a "Windows" experience on top of this solid foundation would for teh first time attract real attention and a real user base.

I have had a couple conversations that have expressed a similar reasons for not liking Friedman, but contorting facts in order to express your concerns about Friedman is inappropriate.

"Novell presented a new menu for Gnome. It is really ugly..."
It's also optional.

"Friedman wanted to advance the show and the worst case is that XGL survives and we will have AIGLX and XGL in parallel....Be sure Novell will standardise on XGL..."

Your claim is incorrect. In fact, I recently interviewed Friedman at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, where he actually commented in the interview that Xgl is not the term we use because we may well switch over to AIGLX. Compiz is where all the cool stuff is, which is why SLED10 uses the name "Desktop Effects."

http://www.novell.com/linux/yourlinuxtour/

I don't know when the mapping thing was set up, but I imagine it's got something to do with the Roadshow - getting an idea of how many people would attend, perhaps?

There aren't many people (maybe 6?) around my city (Dallas, TX) that are mapped.

Several people have commented on SLED being proprietary. Amid this firebranding, I ask you to consider some details about SLED, SUSE, and Novell. 1. Open Source SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop was developed in open source. It includes a couple pieces of proprietary software from partner companies, such as the Macromedia Flash plugin for Firefox, RealPlayer, and Adobe Reader. It includes no proprietary kernel modules. Andreas Jaeger recently posted on SUSE's policy here. Novell includes a couple proprietary packages developed at Novell on the SLED10 media, but they do not install by default, and are all related to integrating with enterprise infrastructural services (already-deployed Novell enterprise systems). 2. Free Software, but Not Free Updates SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is fully functional free software. It does not require any kind of license key. However, Novell hopes to make revenue on the software update service, as well as enterprise support, consulting, training, and other services. The activation keys activate the update service for one year. (Clever winners of the 50 1-year activations that we are giving away might extend that a bit by using the 60 day eval before they use their activation code.) 2. Free Updates? Yes, for openSUSE. Novell also underwrites another desktop distribution openSUSE, which includes a lot more packages than SLED. Anyone can download it and use it. However, SLED today has some features that were (thankfully) not included in openSUSE 10.1, the current version. (In fact, we had a major screw up with a including a not-ready component in openSUSE, causing a mess that we are still trying to clean up in the SUSE community.) The feature delta with SLED, as well as the extensive extra polishing that SLED received before shipping--have prompted many people in the community to expressed their desire to use SLED. They like what Novell has created and packaged--an amazingly well-assembled desktop system, and they would rather not wait for many of the features and design elements to appear in openSUSE 10.2. 3. Novell Contributes...a Lot Please give Novell some credit for driving many of the great Linux features that have shown up not only on SUSE Linux, but many other distributions. Novell hired David Reveman to complete his work on Xgl & Compiz, which are now available on Ubuntu, Gentoo and other distros. Novell hired Aaron Bockover to create Banshee on the Helix framework so that we could have legal mp3 on Linux. Novell bought Ximian and continues to enable them to create things like the new main menu for GNOME (Jimmy Krehl's "slab"), and solid desktop search well ahead of Microsoft Vista (which still may not ship with that feature). A major reason why plug and play devices like USB drives, mp3 players and cameras just work today is Robert Love's project Utopia. SUSE engineers today are pushing upstream Linux kernel code that has been and still is greatly extending battery life. Maybe these examples are still too self-interested? Novell employees the team that maintains GCC, which is a 100% upstream contribution the GNU toolchain, and yields zero competitive advantage to Novell. Novell CTO Jeff Jaffe has stated the reason: you can't just take, you gotta give back. That's why Novell is participating and contributing. Novell is part way through a cultural change that I think is nothing short of astounding. Say what you want about our marketing missing the mark. But if you believe that we are too proprietary, or that we do not actively engaged enough in open source, then tell us why you think so. Otherwise, is it really justified to berate Novell for being proprietary just because we have offered 50 update activation keys on an awareness campaign? Please refer people to this comment if you see accusations of SLED being proprietary. -- Ted Haeger (You can find me at http://reverendted.wordpress.com./

We are all very sorry that you do not understand what "Open Source" actually means.

We are also very sorry that you do not know anything about SuSE, the difference between SLED and OpenSuSE, and what the license is actually used for.

Now that you know you are lacking in the necessary knowledge to make the statement that you did, please go educate yourself using the free resources located at http://www.google.com/ http://www.novell.com/linux, and http://www.opensuse.org./

Good luck on your mission.

Well, let's put this in perspective a bit.

My preferred mail client is Evolution... but Windows can't run it.

By your logic, that's a Windows shortcoming because Novell hasn't created a Windows version?

Interesting thought, but I don't follow.

It sounds like you want a solution for Windows, right? Before you move away from the desktops, I'd suggest that you take a look at Novell ZENWorks. I have seen it in action in a university campus (several labs and thousands of PCs). My impression is that this software solved the large majority of the issues related to maintaining desktops running Windows. I never saw any of those PCs down or infected by a virus.

If you are talking about Windows, I think your biggest problem will be convincing your users to move to a more restrictive platform. They are probably used to having Administrative privileges on their Windows desktops today, right? Good luck trying to convince them that this is a bad thing.

Cheers

Yes, since it's makes heavy use of your video card. I run SuSE 10.1, the list is in a package called xgl-hardware-list which installs a file to /etc/X11/xgl-hardware-list. I'm not sure of other distros, but Google should have the answers you seek.

For me, one of the things that would move Linux from being a great development machine to a great desktop machine is the inclusion OpenGL based windowing system. The smooth window animation, the ability to shrink all the window to thumbnails for a quick overview, snappy transparency built into every window... These things aren't necessary, but they provide some nice touches that make a user interface feel like home.
What is current plan for AIGLX? Is there going to be more collaboration with XGL? Are you working with NVIDIA to get the needed extensions in their driver so it will work with AIGLX? Do you expect that AMD's purchase of ATI will result in better Linux drivers, that can be used for this project? By what Fedora Core version would you expect to be including AIGLX by default, able to be enabled with the click of a button?

Frankly, ZoneAlarm is goofy.

AppArmor is vastly superior, in that it also can be used to regulate resource privelidges on a per-application basis, but instead of only controlling network access, AppArmor works on a system-wide basis. Furthermore, AppArmor can isolate applications from one another. The GUI isn't so bad.

Oddly enough, we have "Ask Slashdot:" articles discussing the very technology that underlies AppArmor, LSM, and how one might be able to find a similar thing on Windows.

Furthermore, the types of issues that cause you to use ZoneAlarm aren't nearly as prevalent on Linux. You don't get malware, and OpenSource and/or high-end pro software tend not to phone home randomly.

If you're really, really, really determined to have lots of really, really annoying popsups (remember that things like keyloggers are resolved by AppArmor), you can use either Program Guard or SysTrace for Linux. Program Guard annoys you about TCP/IP access on a per-application basis, while SysTrace annoys you about everything.

TuxGuardian is apparently another app like this

NetLimiter: I do not understand the point of this application. Why would you ever want to do per-application bandwidth shaping when you can do global L7 QoS? Furthermore, it seems to me that you can use a combination trickle for hard "per-application" limits (which, IMHO, don't _ever_ make sense_, and global QoS to acheive any combination of features you could potentially acheive with NetLimiter.

This is a list of GUI iproute2 QoS configurators, but I think you're pretty much fine running Wondershaper, and perhaps watching pretty graphics go by with MasterShaper.

As it is, I run 6 desktops, 3 vonage lines, and 3 laptops over a Comcast 8Mbps/768kbps connection. I use one firewall on the router, running linux, with QoS enabled and global L7 traffic shaping. We have no problems when simultaneously running Limewire, Bittorrent, Vonage, and generalized web access (everything remains responsive).

The real problem with pointing at these sorts of applications is that this kind of functionality is just not needed on Linux. Proper application isolation, lack of malware, high quality global QoS, and decent packet filtering means that these kinds of annoying GUIs that are really nothing other than system maintenace and mundane micromanaging are not needed. I don't need to rate limit my downloads or uploads in order to preserve network responsiveness; I don't need to watch my applications to see if they are phoning home or not. I don't need to worry about whether or not my financial data is being read by malware; I don't need to worry about whether compromised user-apps on my system are affecting admin-level system services.

If you really, really, really, really want, the tools are out there, in proper Java, QT, and/or GTK form. But the reason they aren't widely deployed is because you really shouldn't be using them; a computer is a tool for work or entertainment, not an adventure game on its own. We don't live in the Tron world; and much like you don't need to have pressure gauges and per-pump control over your automobiles fluidic systems, you don't need to have direct control over this stuff on Unixy systems. It just works, and that's good enough for 99.9999% of non-super-geeks out there. For the remaining .0001% of us, we write our own GUIs, hunt out little known programs, or use the commandline. But the vast majority of computer users out there shouldn't need to be familiar with a tool like ZoneAlarm, and shouldn't have to worry about all those bloody popups. For the m

What the hell are you talking about?

Please look at Novell's home page.

Other than the central page pulsating flash advertisement printing in LARGE, BOLD PRINT "IT'S HERE! SUSE ENTERPRISE 10", and the 4 announcements talking about SUSE ENTERPRISE WORKSTATION/SERVER, and 20 or product links to "OPEN ENTERPRISE SERVER", and "SUSE ENTERPRISE SERVER", with a primary link of "DATA CENTER", leading to a "SUSE ENTERPRISE DATA CENTER" website, what makes you think that Novell isn't positioned, at least in terms of product lines, against Redhat?

Novell's bet the company on Enterprise SuSE, and Novell's going full steam head promoting it. They've released it, are realizing sales on it, and run it internally 100%. What are you talking about?

There's also Mandriva and Novell/Suse that offer enterprise support. A quick visit to their web page will show you that that is what they are focussing on, while the free community releases aren't really pushed at all, and are only available if you know what you are looking for. There's probably a couple other linux distros that do the same, but these are the ones i'm familiar with.

You mention defrag, and that is one thing I've never understood.

I have a SuSE 6.3 installation on an old PC, and I note that when I start it up, soon there is "activity" on all of the drives, one at a time, it is doing a cron job. That must have been similar to defrag. I have not used that machine in a while, I have forgotten exactly what was being done, but it did not take very long at all.

All that seems obsolete now, I use livecd linux, see my screenshots link below.
I've tried to put some girls in the wallpaper to make it entertaining, so enjoy.

What's fun is to use Opera, it's "F11" fullscreen is really fullscreen, put one of these
screenshots up, and it will seem as though the machine is running linux...

Sorry to reply to my own post, but you should look at http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/eval.html. It looks like you have to register and get an activation code to get the 60 days of updates.

To test the .Net stack, we ran Windows Server 2003 R2, SQL Server 2005 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Across the board, this configuration performed very well, with the top overall average throughput (by far) at 4.59M bps.

Quick check.....
$2,792.00 (Froogle Directron) Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise, 25 Clients
$5,489.18 (Froogle Non Academic) SQL Server 2005 Complete
$5,619.00 (MS Website Retail) SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Server License with 5 CALs

$1,124.00 (Dell) Suse Enterprise Linux 9 With Server Hardware
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=555&l=en&oc=MLB1580&s=biz Couldn't find Suse Enterprise 10 Integrated LAMP Stackhttp://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpris eserver/lamp.html

Hmmm, Could train a couple of Windows Admins with $11,000. Better yet just Hire a good Linux Admin.

To a large degree, we credit this strong showing to the high level of integration that exists among the components of this stack. While most of the open-source and Java systems are developed independently of each other, each of the .Net components is designed specifically to integrate and perform well together. Even if the .Net stack had bombed convincingly in these tests, it would probably still maintain popularity in many companies.

Some people (PHBs) will never come around.

But its strong showing should give companies confidence that the .Net stack will handle most high-level enterprise needs.

For more than $12Grand it better blow away the Free Alternatives and configure itself and require zero admin.

I know I will get slammed for not using TCO but I don't believe those numbers at all. In my experience it takes the same amount of time for day to day maintenance. And when there is a problem (and there will be, no matter which one you choose) It costs me less time and therefore money to bring back up the Linux box.

Cost is not the only factor in a buying decision but is a factor, and if performance is arguably equal than it is a huge factor.

"I switched from Windows ME a few months ago after having saved enough money to get Windows XP .. there isn't much to worry about from getting spyware, adware, and computer virii."

Why the wait, download and burn a copy of SuSE Linux and you won't have to worry about 'computer virii'.

"I had the notion .. the Linux community was too arrogant to help out any new people with basic problems"

Not my experience, for instance I posted to the Mpeg4IP forum and got a polite and helpfull reply from one of the developers.

Try openSUSE ( http://www.opensuse.org/ ) with XGL ( http://en.opensuse.org/Xgl ) enabled. I got it running within about 10 minutes following this howto ( http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17174. html ) on my HP dv8230ca laptop.

I can scale entire apps, make them transparent, wobbly windows are cool and not to mention the cube...

I agree, managing multiple boxes is where the money gets charged, because that is (historically) something that only enterprises wanted to do -and it is where all enterprise-grade distros ask for money. Now that anyone with Xen or VMWare player can have a heterogenous cluster of linux distros on their laptop, everyone needs distributed cluster admin.

Have you looked at LCFG for managing many linux systems. It is one of the very-large-scale linux desktop management tools, used for very large clusters including european grid installations, edinburgh university's computing department's linux infrastructure, etc.

You can skip all that with this link: http://www.novell.com/link/6.html

I am not a regular SUSE user but I have used SUSE in the past and as an administrator at a site with a small (few 100) Linux desktops I have recently been testing SUSE 10.1 as the site has always used SUSE.

Take all of these replies with a grain of salt. I haven't filed problems in Novell's bugzilla and anyone complaining about things but not filing bugs probably isn't interested in helping to make things better.

1. Package management. This is a curious one as Yast's dep solving seems to now be done by the Novell zmd daemon. This daemon seems to have a XML-RPC interface and consequently can be driven by many interfaces. Yast is one GUI front end, rug is a text driven front end and there are some GTK zmd-installer/zmd-updater tools too. Alas Yast's package groups don't yet appear to be rug bundles which is a little frustrating. In SUSE 10.1 there is also a bug which renders the zmd* and rug unable to resolve dependencies. You will have to use Yast to get an update that fixes this.
2. SUSE has alway had the option within the Yast control centre to upgrade to a new version of SUSE. I haven't tested rug's ability to do this but after patching it seems fairly capable. The bad news is that the dep solver is slower than Red Hat/Fedora's yum (interesting yum is written in Python and novell-zmd is written in mono). The daemon can go to sleep and takes time to wake up (I also wonder if it refetches the list of packages on remote sources every time it wakes up). It eats a lot of memory and CPU when solving but might have lots of interesting features like being able to have updates "pushed" to it (handy when you have lots of machines).
3. There are drop shadows in compiz under XGL when I used it.
4. This is true. Compiz lacks metacity's focus stealing prevention, you can't drag windows off the top and bottom of the screen. You can configure keybindings and it seems to follow GNOME's theme (but not KDEs). It's very usuable and I believe was based off metacity originally (for Wm decisions).
5. Dunno. Perhaps they want to let it stablise (Ubuntu carries a bunch of patches to stabalise its version of 2.14).

There are things in SUSE 10.1 that definitely make it more attractive for large installations (proxy management is far better than the other distros I've used). I need more time to evaulate beagle, XGL works fairly well for me even with KDE (getting XGL going on the integrated Intel graphics cards with open source drivers was a dream compared to the ATI binary drivers). However there are also things broken within SUSE that are not broken elsewhere due to their patches (gaim + jabber + proxy = have to use proxy?!) but other places where their patches are absolutely amazing (I've never seen openoffice start so quickly from cold boot, evolution has right mouse button spelling suggestions!). Until I get round to filing bugs I'm going to leave my criticism there though.

I am not a regular SUSE user but I have used SUSE in the past and as an administrator at a site with a small (few 100) Linux desktops I have recently been testing SUSE 10.1 as the site has always used SUSE.

Take all of these replies with a grain of salt. I haven't filed problems in Novell's bugzilla and anyone complaining about things but not filing bugs probably isn't interested in helping to make things better.

1. Package management. This is a curious one as Yast's dep solving seems to now be done by the Novell zmd daemon. This daemon seems to have a XML-RPC interface and consequently can be driven by many interfaces. Yast is one GUI front end, rug is a text driven front end and there are some GTK zmd-installer/zmd-updater tools too. Alas Yast's package groups don't yet appear to be rug bundles which is a little frustrating. In SUSE 10.1 there is also a bug which renders the zmd* and rug unable to resolve dependencies. You will have to use Yast to get an update that fixes this.
2. SUSE has alway had the option within the Yast control centre to upgrade to a new version of SUSE. I haven't tested rug's ability to do this but after patching it seems fairly capable. The bad news is that the dep solver is slower than Red Hat/Fedora's yum (interesting yum is written in Python and novell-zmd is written in mono). The daemon can go to sleep and takes time to wake up (I also wonder if it refetches the list of packages on remote sources every time it wakes up). It eats a lot of memory and CPU when solving but might have lots of interesting features like being able to have updates "pushed" to it (handy when you have lots of machines).
3. There are drop shadows in compiz under XGL when I used it.
4. This is true. Compiz lacks metacity's focus stealing prevention, you can't drag windows off the top and bottom of the screen. You can configure keybindings and it seems to follow GNOME's theme (but not KDEs). It's very usuable and I believe was based off metacity originally (for Wm decisions).
5. Dunno. Perhaps they want to let it stablise (Ubuntu carries a bunch of patches to stabalise its version of 2.14).

There are things in SUSE 10.1 that definitely make it more attractive for large installations (proxy management is far better than the other distros I've used). I need more time to evaulate beagle, XGL works fairly well for me even with KDE (getting XGL going on the integrated Intel graphics cards with open source drivers was a dream compared to the ATI binary drivers). However there are also things broken within SUSE that are not broken elsewhere due to their patches (gaim + jabber + proxy = have to use proxy?!) but other places where their patches are absolutely amazing (I've never seen openoffice start so quickly from cold boot, evolution has right mouse button spelling suggestions!). Until I get round to filing bugs I'm going to leave my criticism there though.

The reviewer totally spaced off the coolest part of SLED, seamless support for XGL. SLED has an XGL configurator built into the control panel. It even makes installing vga drivers easy on Linux for once, no mucking with the xorg.conf to get dual monitors or XGL working.

Seriously, if you like eye candy, Linux has never had it better. This will even impress the guys using a Mac. Remember how cool it was to play with the Dock the first time? This is like that only better.

If you could care less for eye candy but like the productivity boost of Apple's Expose, then you need to look into SLED. If you like accessability, XGL does zoom better than any other desktop, even Windows. No other distro has XGL like SLED does since Novell sponsored its development. http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/ Its hard for me to believe that this guy missed that in his review.

I don't think that SLED 10 is a Vista killer, but it does make Desktop linux look good even to Windows fanboys. Seriously, give XGL on SLED a look.

I've been on the beta the entire time and I have to say that I'm very happy with what they've done. Yes, I work quite a bit with Novell so I'm biased but having tried to support desktop Linux deployments using other solutions has been miserable. The amount of time and money that's gone into making SLED 10 enterprise ready is impressive. They even have an intro video with clips for all the major pieces of the desktop for helping new users (similar to the Windows XP new user intro) so that it's as easy as possible for new users to get up and running. The gnome menu interface is very slick with the beagle integration and the end result is a very clean desktop. For anyone who is interested in trying it out you can get it from Novell (you have to fill out a survey first). I highly recommend just giving it a try to at least see what Novell's been up to.

Watch a video of it here and you might get a better idea of what XGL is.

More videos here and here.

Watch a video of it here and you might get a better idea of what XGL is.

More videos here and here.

I've heard very good things about Novell Linux Point of Service, based on SUSE LINUX. Now, mind you, it's not free, but it's not as expensive as many proprietary OS-based solutions. It's also pretty damn high quality - as evidenced by IBM private labeling it and selling it as their Linux-based POS solution. Additionally, it does have options for support that a free (no cost) product does not.

So, if it's just a Linux-based flexible solution you're looking for, this might fit the bill. Otherwise, if it's no cost, everyone else in the thread made some good suggestions.

(And, no, I do not work for Novell - nor have I ever... if fact, I'm recommending this product based entirely on word-of-mouth from many friends in that area of tech. I used to be in your shoes, exactly. Good luck!)

Well then, why doesn't Novell sponsor the development of a financial application? They discovered the importance themselves (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798 .html) while still selling SUSE Enterprise Linux. It's amazing how companies sometimes behave or don't take their business seriously.

O. Wyss

I started watching the XGL videos. The first one was transparency. Funny: MS has had this capability since W2K--you just need Vitrite to activate it. Since I've never, ever, ever seen a really useful use of transparency* I'm glad they left this off by default.

* OS X's early use of semi-transparent title bars sucked when you had a bunch of windows in the same general area. Note that this is gone now. (On the other hand, they also got rid of tabs, and that totally sucks, so they're not exactly batting a thousand.) I've seen lots of people with semi-transparent terminal windows, but they're more in the "looks cool and doesn't hurt productivity much" camp, rather than being truly useful. Ditto for the transparent unused pallets in MS Office on OS X--I can't stand them, but they don't actually seem to hurt most people.

WOW, They got deleted (404 Page Not Found) pretty fast, as if they were a virus. http://www.novell.com/company/bios/jmessman.html http://www.novell.com/company/bios/jtibbetts.html At least Microsoft has the courtesy to add the word "Former" next to their name instead of deleting them. Take Martin Taylor for example: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/martintayl or/default.mspx

WOW, They got deleted (404 Page Not Found) pretty fast, as if they were a virus. http://www.novell.com/company/bios/jmessman.html http://www.novell.com/company/bios/jtibbetts.html At least Microsoft has the courtesy to add the word "Former" next to their name instead of deleting them. Take Martin Taylor for example: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/martintayl or/default.mspx

  I'm testing ArchLinux rightnow. Installing KDE is a bit tricky . If you do go the archlinux rout qtpckg,srcpack and aurbuild are a must.

I have also used with kubuntu it's prity good. When I used it their were some odd problems most comparitively minor. One of the most irititating was that if I didn't "properly" quit amarock my CPU'd get peged at between 95% and 100%. Killing process didn't do anything-had to do a complete reboot. I think they fixed that though.