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My company is considering this to replace a bunch of Sun Qube 3 appliences. It seems as though it could be a nice solution, however I have not had time to do much testing yet.

Check OpenExhcange 4 out.

Hercules is the answer to getting quality time in a Big Iron environment:

http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules/

Almost worthy of its own discussion ! votes ?

Hercules is an open source software implementation of the mainframe System/370 and ESA/390 architectures, in addition to the new 64-bit z/Architecture. Hercules runs under Linux, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000.

You may also wish to download the original open source mainframe operating system, IBM OS360 ...

There also are a number of versions of Linux you can run on theIBM Z series Mainframes or the Hercules Emulator

Nothing like getting hot with some Big Iron running in your Pentium in the Study :^)

• Samsung CONTACT
• Calmeno
• SuSE Linux Openexchange Server

I'm a little concerned that this may lead to no x86-64 (Opteron, Althon64) support from RedHat. :(

HP co-owns the IP for Itanium with Intel, so they have a vested interest in seeing Itanium get lots of support, and AMD x86-64 get none. RedHat has already announced Itanium versions of Advanced Server, but AFAIK, has been silent on the x86-64 front.

SuSE has announced long ago that they'd release x86-64 versions of their distro to coincide with Opteron's release, and they seem to be actively involved with that process.

Am I being paranoid here? Or does it look like RH might not support the most cost-effective 64bit platform going? Not all of us have deep pockets for I2. :(

Don
my smug mug is on smugmug ... is yours?

"SuSE offers the possibility to install SuSE Linux free of charge directly from the FTP server. The function scope of FTP versions is virtually the same as that of the "normal" version. Merely a few program packages have been excluded due to license reasons. The installation support is not included either."

This works for releases back to the 7 series. Download/create the boot disk and module disks. With 8.1, and most likely 8.2, you can download a boot ISO (which includes all of the module disks). Using either the floppy or the ISO, you can install SuSE via the Internet using ftp or NFS.

See these links for details:

• http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/suse_linux /index.html
• ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/README.FT P

Also, I've been using SuSE since 6.2 and like it's ease-of-use. Updates can be managed using their YaST program. You can even test-drive new versions by booting their Live-Eval CDs! Kinda fun way to freak out your co-workers by changing their Windoze box to Linux while they're out to lunch ;) No side-effects or lasting changes either...perfectly safe.

Anyways, just my $0.02!

`Aikanaka...

"SuSE offers the possibility to install SuSE Linux free of charge directly from the FTP server. The function scope of FTP versions is virtually the same as that of the "normal" version. Merely a few program packages have been excluded due to license reasons. The installation support is not included either."

This works for releases back to the 7 series. Download/create the boot disk and module disks. With 8.1, and most likely 8.2, you can download a boot ISO (which includes all of the module disks). Using either the floppy or the ISO, you can install SuSE via the Internet using ftp or NFS.

See these links for details:

• http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/suse_linux /index.html
• ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/README.FT P

Also, I've been using SuSE since 6.2 and like it's ease-of-use. Updates can be managed using their YaST program. You can even test-drive new versions by booting their Live-Eval CDs! Kinda fun way to freak out your co-workers by changing their Windoze box to Linux while they're out to lunch ;) No side-effects or lasting changes either...perfectly safe.

Anyways, just my $0.02!

`Aikanaka...

If you're looking to try out SuSE and are a very busy, download the live-eval ISO image. Burn it, boot, and run from CD. No need to struggle with scripts, partitions or file systems.

BTW, if you absulutely need the latest, you may want to consider a source distribution like gentoo. These are usually the most up-to-date distros with the latest goods.

And curiously, if (KDE 3.1 rulez), why SuSE? 8.2 will be the first SuSE release with KDE 3.1. The current release, SuSE 8.1, ships with KDE 3.0.3. I suppose you could update to KDE 3.1 after installing. But then again, you could do that with any distribution (read: one that you are familiar with).

You can run easily run a powerpc native linux distro. VC is nice to run the occasional windows app or pc video game.

Try debian, gentoo, or if ease of use is important suse and yes mandrake. The only thing Powerpc linux can't do is good java support. I think java 1.1 is still in beta.

You can also use darwin or a rootless X server in MacosX and run unix apps that way. Apple is also working on running aqua and X apps side by side in the next version of MacOSX. Apple will introduce its own X server.

Didn't SuSE partner with Ximian to introduce Red Carpet Enterprise to their corporate products recently? press release

"The KDE scanning application Kooka and the commercial OCR tool Kadmos enable users to scan both printed and hand-written texts into the word processing application."

"With the comfortable and enhanced SuSE configuration profile manager, notebook users, who commute between different locations, can switch to the network and hardware configurations of every office site and therefore, can use scanners and printers of the respective location with a simple mouse click."

"[...] and the possibility to store folders in the running system in a crypto file system without the need for a new partitioning." That sounds really cool.

Read the full announcement at http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_release s/archive03/82.html

DISCLAIMER: I am a SUSE (8.1) user, but I've never tried this.

What you do is to download their Live Evaluation CD. You then use that to download the rest via ftp. The link is to version 8.1.

I failed to find anything from 'there'...
What is the problem?

You didnt know what to look for

Three clicks away i was here. Before you clam that something isn't free just because you can choose to buy it in a nice box with a manual you really should try the "download" links.

obviously you didn't download their ISO's.

on the other hand, SuSe, a great OS, is NOT availible unless you shell out money.

look at this
i don't know how well it works but looks promising

Well, I think the solution here is obvious.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)

These 'demo' CD's are not the SUSE distro - the only way to get that is to buy it you can not download it

You are incorrect, sir. You can, in fact, download the entire SuSE distribution fileset from their FTP site. All 5-odd gigabytes worth of it for every version. What you can not do, however, is download recent ISO images of their distribution. You are perfectly free to download the entire distribution and network-install it to your heart's content.

Go here if you're still not sure. If you'd prefer, you could use one of their FTP mirror sites located all over the world.

If you poke around, you'll find the RPMs for all binary packages as well as the sources of every (license permitting) package in their entire distribution. I count 2,072 source RPM packages.

For the record, up until the 7.0 release, SuSE always had downloadable, installable (not "live") ISOs of every release. Sometimes it came out later than their retail version, but it was always there, and I've got about six burned versions (up-to and including 7.0) to prove it.

These 'demo' CD's are not the SUSE distro - the only way to get that is to buy it you can not download it

You are incorrect, sir. You can, in fact, download the entire SuSE distribution fileset from their FTP site. All 5-odd gigabytes worth of it for every version. What you can not do, however, is download recent ISO images of their distribution. You are perfectly free to download the entire distribution and network-install it to your heart's content.

Go here if you're still not sure. If you'd prefer, you could use one of their FTP mirror sites located all over the world.

If you poke around, you'll find the RPMs for all binary packages as well as the sources of every (license permitting) package in their entire distribution. I count 2,072 source RPM packages.

For the record, up until the 7.0 release, SuSE always had downloadable, installable (not "live") ISOs of every release. Sometimes it came out later than their retail version, but it was always there, and I've got about six burned versions (up-to and including 7.0) to prove it.

Well, aside from the fact that SuSE has bundled Crossover - you can now get OpenExchange to manage "enterprise" email in a format that is compatible with MS Outlook and apparantly PDA's as well. Does anyone know if this really works? It claims to be "open" but I'm wondering what that means exactly.

"GNUWin II is a collection of Free Software for Windows"
Looks like they missed something out :)

Note: I've been unable to substantiate this

Easy one. According to counter.li.org there are 18 million users. SuSEgives us " more than 15 million private and professional Linux users around the globe".

If we consider 15 million users, we have $99 x 15M = $1.485.000.000 (one billion and a half).

*sigh* There we go again.
The Slashdot opensource prejudgements must die. Now.

"The problem is as well is that there is no plausible way to get designers and similar 'soft skill' people into the OSS cycle today:"

*Ahem*
How to join the GNOME project for non-hackers FAQ
GNOME Usability Project
GNOME Documentation Project
GNOME Translation Project
And of course the KDE documentation/translation teams.

All projects for non-hackers. And they're quite busy.

"Gimp and Xfig - my two favorite whipping boys, are examples number one and two of programs that nominally have the features, but in practice are painful to use compared to their closed-source equivalents (Photoshop and Visio)."

Well course. They were made in a time when Linux GUIs were just born and developers had almost no experience in good UI design.
Compare the situation to today. GNOME 2.0? KDE 3.0? Evolution? Mozilla? All very mature software with modern and usable GUIs - because the developers have more experience now!

"* culturally, the OSS 3l337 reject anybody without super-skills. don't even pretend that this isnt true."

Oh great, the old "elitism" argument again.
I can't hack the kernel. I don't know assembly. I'm not a Unix expert. I'm not l33t. Yet if I join a GNOME mailing list, and I ask things carefully and politely, providing all the necessery details, I almost always get a good and clear answer (unless of course, nobody knows an answer). I never, I repeat, never get flamed down or told RTFM.

The elists are - what? - 5% of the entire population? The only place I've seen developers occasionally say "RTFM" is on the MPlayer developers list. On mailing lists for popular projects like GNOME and KDE, nobody tells new users to RTFM. Except sometimes as a joke (with a smilie of course). Also, on IRC channels such as #linuxhelp, people are also often friendly and helpful.

Obviously, you are brainwashed by the popular Slashdot prejudgement that OSS developers are elists. That is simply not true. Can you give me any proof that most OSS developers are elists? I don't think so.

"# Technically, there are no mechanisms in place for this. CVS is about code. The development model is essentially about continuous 'patching' of the software rather than grand rearchitecting, which design considerations often require."

Wrong.
If you say they don't design when they first started the project, then yes, I agree with you partially. Mike spent months thinking about Autopackage's design before he actually started writing code.
Most open source project design as they write the code. They learn from their mistakes and make a better design next time.
A good example is KDE 1.0 to 2.0 --> a complete rewrite. They learned from their mistake and made a new, better architecture. In fact, the design is so good, that KDE 3.0 is mostly a cleanup release with no mater architectural changes, and is mostly source compatible with 2.0.
Another good example is the Linux kernel. The new build system has been carefully designed from the ground up, and can't be applied in small continuous patches.

"economically, there's little hope of getting quality designers involved. Programmers barely get recognition in OSS (blowing to hell ESR's naive theories, btw). Who would care who designed what? How do you get street cred as a designer? I mean, it could happen, but it would take a pretty big mental shift."

GNOME Usability Project anyone? A lot of usability studies are contributed by Sun and Ximian. Sun also contributed a lot of user documentation.

"Design = customer focus. OSS too often has this not. Profit drive causes customer focus. Alas."

Commercial open source software. 'nuff said.

Recently (October, I believe) SuSE announced OpenExchange. I am not sure what your needs are, but it seems to be the project attacking Exchange. OpenExchange

It is commercial, but the costs would still be significantly less than that of MS Exchange and runs off a Linux server.

For an open source solution, you may need to wait for something like Courier to become mature.

I understand that the old business method for Linux companies of offering their full products for download, and selling box retail copies for like $29.99 is not the best one... so I understand the need for them to branch out into these more specialist versions of their OS.

But why the hell do they charge so much? The cost of that firewall package was 1,999 Euro. We bought a PIX firewall and it cost like 3,000 Euros. Considering the PIX is actually a hardware appliance as well, I dont think its that bad a deal.

The whole point about Linux distributions (for me at least) was that they undercut the opposition by being either free or ridiculously cheap.. but now they are releasing products that are priced so highly, there is hardly anything in it. Why the huge mark up?

I was looking at the very cool looking SuSE OpenExchange which is designed to compete with Exchange.. and I seriously think after looking at the web demo that it really could.. but it again is priced so damn high, its actually cheaper for us to buy MS Exchange 2000 on our educational license than it is to buy that.

http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/suse_busi ness/firewall/index.html

Oh, except non-GUI email programs have problems too.

I know SuSE isnt availble free to d/l anymore, but I still like the distro quite a bit...

say what?

no isos, but ftp. that's the only install method I ever use. Set up, start, get lunch, come back, do the final set up, viola. Most other distros work similarly, I guess (or hope).

SuSE has had this for a while, what they call the Live CD. I believe they had them with the all the 7.x distros. And yes, it's available over at their site.

Yea, I know SuSE isnt availble free to d/l anymore, but I still like the distro quite a bit...

Can't get to the original article either, anyone have a mirror? I would like to read it ;oP

I do like the fact that Knoppix can deal with 2GB
of data due to on-the-fly-compression...and since it's running off a cd anyway, I'm sure it won't make a big performance difference...

caino

Don't touch my .sig there!

Why don't you eurotrash just come up with a better desktop OS? Sorry, I can't comment anymore. I am laughing too hard.

Would that be SUSE Linux or Mandrake Linux you are referring to by any chance?

uhhh... Yellow Dog Linux or SUSE???

So you've got your nanotech computing surface paint, why not put it to work? The processors are presumably a lot slower than modern CPUs, but so what, they don't have much better to do other than decide what color to be (What color is a chameleon in a mirror?) So give it some solar power source and let it compute things in its spare time.

The other problem is what kind of computation a system like that would do "Why am I here?" "How do I get somewhere else that nobody will shoot at me?" "I smell paint remover! Run away! Run away!"

with POP3 functionality.

Everything else will be "Planned for the future" and they will be recruiting programmers.

C'mon now! They even state on the features page that The preferred protocol is IMAP.
Why predict when you can read and find out?
Features page says it will come with SMTP, Webmail, IMAP, LDAP, spam filter, Samba PDC, and DHCP. The features include E-mail (of course), scheduler, document management, project management, addressbooks, forums, knowledgebase, etc., etc., etc..

Not that you can't piece these software packages yourself, but this sounds like it will be an integrated solution for mail server like Exchange or Groupwise servers, integrated IMAP and web interface; basically they want people to have OpenExchange server interoperate with MS Exchange server (migrating period), and after you're sure everything is set up correctly as you want it then ditch the MS Exchange completely. All this will be configurable through YaST too.

To me it sounds very nice as an alternative and way cheaper too.

with POP3 functionality.

Everything else will be "Planned for the future" and they will be recruiting programmers.

C'mon now! They even state on the features page that The preferred protocol is IMAP.
Why predict when you can read and find out?
Features page says it will come with SMTP, Webmail, IMAP, LDAP, spam filter, Samba PDC, and DHCP. The features include E-mail (of course), scheduler, document management, project management, addressbooks, forums, knowledgebase, etc., etc., etc..

Not that you can't piece these software packages yourself, but this sounds like it will be an integrated solution for mail server like Exchange or Groupwise servers, integrated IMAP and web interface; basically they want people to have OpenExchange server interoperate with MS Exchange server (migrating period), and after you're sure everything is set up correctly as you want it then ditch the MS Exchange completely. All this will be configurable through YaST too.

To me it sounds very nice as an alternative and way cheaper too.

The migration from MS Exchange 5.5 is possible without any difficulties.

So, instead of paying the Microsoft tax, you're paying the SuSe tax?

A distributed front end for compilation/gcc is nice. However, this idea has been implemented before, and in a more general fashion.

PPMAKE work as a distributed front end for GNU make. This works brilliantly (I used it as a part of my MSc thesis), and distributes arbitrary compilation work in arbitrary languages to a preconfigured list of hosts.

I remember using a cluster of approximately 30 hosts, this worked good. But required a fast master.

This is available as a package for at least Suse.

Requires PVM to be installed, though. But this is usually no problem. :-)

Of course Gnome2 is included, read the package lists: Personal, Professional.

Of course Gnome2 is included, read the package lists: Personal, Professional.

I know for the sparc versions, you can find the new 2.4.19 kernels and gcc 3.2 at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/kukuk/SPARC/ (Mirrors also carry the /people directories, use a mirror)

Upgraded my SuSE Sparc64 8.0 to gcc3.2 and kernel 2.4.19, works great.

i started using linux a little over two years ago. i went to linuxworld 2000 in nyc and came home with free copies of several distrobution's cds. i went cold turkey off of windows and into redhat. after about a month, i realized that i wasn't really learning much from redhat.
that night i decided i was going to find a distro that i liked. i installed everything (suse, turbolinux, debian, conectiva). finally, i installed slackware an was amazed at its simplicity. it was remarkably voodoo-free. there were no crazy scripts to confuse me, everything made sense.
now i use debian. i forget when or why i made the switch. i still love slack, but i'm hooked on debian's package management and software availability. slackware is the best distro to *learn* linux on. it forces you to do things yourself, and that's important. it's not quite as hardcore as linux from scratch, and i've heard crux and gentoo are similar, but slack will always hold a special place in my heart.

Thanks Pat.

In other news SuSE Linux 8.1 is expected on the October 7th

The early model G3's shouldn't have any problem with the kind of network loads required (the cable/DSL bandwidth is going to top out before the CPU, disk or memory bandwidth becomes a problem) and should only cost about $400. Add in some extra RAM and a copy of OS X, and you're looking at no more than $650. If you go with Darwin, NetBSD, or one of the PowerPC Linux distro's, and you can get by with just the base system price.

If you really want a deal, and feel up to a bit of hardware hacking, you could look for a dead iMac. So long as the logic board is Ok, you should be able to hack together a power supply (if/when you need a monitor you can use any VGA style monitor with a Mac/VGA converter). The only real issue with an iMac would be support for a second hard-drive, but you might be able to make due with an external drive on a USB or Firewire port.

I don't know what a dead iMac goes for these days, but I can't believe you'd have to spend more than $300.

Well, I guess you're right. Nobody should be allowed to make money off of other people's work. The issue here is that linux companies are allowed to tinker with the product and sell it. The GPL allows this. The question is, is CleanFlicks allowed to do this? If each person is getting a legally purchased copy of the movie, then sure they are. I could buy a movie and pay someone to edit it for me.

If you want to check out Linux without potentially killing your computer (and if you're a linux newbie this is very possible) either download Knoppix or something like Suse LiveCD. These run directly off the CD and do not require you to repartition your hard drive and the like. If you don't like them, take out the CD, delete the temp files (if you choose to make any), and go back to Windows.

Just an addendum, a lot of older CD-writers (like mine) will not burn Knoppix since it is 700MB.

Or try the new Gentoo and play some UT2003 while you're at it.

SuSE is the current "preferered" distribution for both PPC iSeries & pSeries platforms in addition to the mainframe zSeries. With the imminent release of UnitedLinux at the same kind of cost the SLES version distribution seems to be competing with the consortium.

SuSE is the current "preferered" distribution for both PPC iSeries & pSeries platforms in addition to the mainframe zSeries. With the imminent release of UnitedLinux at the same kind of cost the SLES version distribution seems to be competing with the consortium.

SuSE's eMail Server product looks like a viable alternative to Exchange. Unfortunately, their present offer requires installing SuSE (our infrastructure is based on Solaris and FreeBSD, and changing that would be quite painful). If enough people request a stand-alone version, then they will probably ship one.

SuSE's eMail Server product looks like a viable alternative to Exchange. Unfortunately, their present offer requires installing SuSE (our infrastructure is based on Solaris and FreeBSD, and changing that would be quite painful). If enough people request a stand-alone version, then they will probably ship one.

And it's here.

... and, significantly, the knowledge that part of your purchase money will not go into the coffers of M$. Furthermore, your purchase will not artificially boost the Windoze-on-the-desktop numbers. Y'know, that mythical 95%+ that people keep bandying about.

It's bad enough, as a Mac user, that all my dual-platform games purchases count as *Windows* sales - but buying a PC, re-formatting & installing a real OS only to be labelled yet another M$ victory??? No thanks!