Slashdot Mirror

Suse too. They provide a solid 10 years of support.

Blog post: https://www.suse.com/c/further...

Blog post: https://www.suse.com/c/further...

Just ask SUSE:

Just learn to read the docs if you insist on having esoteric options turned.
In 2017, RAID56 are still marked incomplete.

Modern filesystem are a huge pile of diverse features, some are fully stable and used in production (e.g.: RAID0 and 1) other are still in development (e.g.: RAID56).
Complain that BTRFS is completely crap because RAID5/6 isn't fully functionnal and production ready, is like complaining that the venerable XFS is utter crap because its copy-on-write and snapshotting doesn't work yet.

(and BTW, in-band deduplication doesn't even exist yet in BTRFS. ZFS is supposed to have it, but is an ultra-massive performance killer from what I've heard)
(auto-defrag works, but is a write-perfomance killer. alternatives a no defrag at all, which is a read-performance killer. or using out-band defrag, which requires maintenance and kills snapshot correlation.
all these are problem which are specific to copy-on-write (ZFS, BTRFS) and log-structured (UDF, F2FS) filesystems)
(

Just ask SUSE:

"we are still refusing to support 'Automatic Defragmentation', 'In-band Deduplication' and higher RAID levels, because the quality of these options is not where it ought to be"

Xen is "very secure"?

There were 15 Xen security vulnerabilities fixed this month.

Shi et al. just presented a paper on architectural security problems with Xen.

Don't get me wrong - I appreciate the Xen team's efforts at security. And other hypervisors have their own problems (though it's been a while since I've seen a report of a VM escape from PR/SM). And "secure" isn't meaningful as an absolute; it only means something in relation to a threat model. But it's still rather premature to label Xen "very secure" in general, assuming a reasonable threat model.

Since my distro has already provided a fix, it's a moot point for me.

Yes, if you share a printer using Samba you can optionally create the print$ share that windows will use when trying to download the drivers.
As documented at https://www.suse.com/communiti... (and many other places)

https://www.debian.org/
https://devuan.org/
http://redhat.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
https://www.suse.com/
https://getfedora.org/

To list just a few...

MS is just making the choice more binary - either you choose to let them do anything they want with your computer, or you choose to let them do NOTHING.

Then, how do I recompile a custom kernel and with UEFI Boot and Secure Boot run it?

Depends on how your distro of choice has implemented Secure Boot.

All of the distros with official support are using a shim derived from Red Hat's. That shim is a very simple bootloader which maintains compliance with Secure Boot by only chaining on to verified binaries, but it allows the use of an additional public key which has been compiled in to the binary. Anyone who finds it worth the $99 can have their build signed by Microsoft and will then be able to boot anything signed with the associated private key on top of anything signed with the Microsoft keys the system has built in. It also provides a method to pass the public key down the chain so the next stage bootloader, kernel, and beyond can verify with it as well.

Fedora and Ubuntu stop here. Fedora signs GRUB2 with their key which then verifies the kernel, which then verifies the modules. ( http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12... ) Ubuntu jumped on a loophole in the wording of the Secure Boot spec to just use their key to sign a bootloader which will then happily launch an unsigned kernel. ( https://lists.ubuntu.com/archi... )

Suse took things a step further and expanded the shim to support a local key list in the UEFI configuration area. ( https://www.suse.com/communiti... ). Now even a system that lacks the ability to add keys to the firmware's verification process can run a fully signed boot process with custom keys.

Finally one of the main original developers on the shim who has since left Red Hat took Suse's key management code, mixed it with his own continued tinkering, and added a user interface that comes up if you attempt to boot a signed binary that doesn't match an approved key, allowing the user to browse for a key on any accessible storage and add it to the system. ( http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20... )

---

So the answer depends on your distro. If you're running Ubuntu, you just compile your new kernel and go have fun because Ubuntu's not yet verifying the kernel (this is apparently becoming optional in 16.04). If you're running Suse, you use whatever tool they offer to add a key to their shim's list. If you're running Fedora, you replace their shim with one of the other variants and either add a key of your own or just go Ubuntu-style and drop it at the kernel.

Of course this is all assuming your system doesn't allow you to change the keys, which I know is a valid theoretical possibility but I still haven't encountered in the real world.

Suse has supported linux on Z-Series for quite some time https://www.suse.com/products/...

What you describe /is/ swapping, which makes it odd since you started with "if you are not using swap". Care to elaborate on what exactly you did, under what circumstances?

My description is accurate. I have just been normally using the computer. Even without any swap, the HDD goes "krrrrrr..." and the system becomes very unresponsive when you begin to run out of memory. You can easily try it yourself, as it is reproducible every time.

It seems to throw out program pages from memory if it knows that they are disk-backed. It seems to be hard to trigger the OOM killer in this condition as well, even though it should happen.

I believe these memory problems can be somewhat mitigated by some hand tuning of the vm parameters "swappiness" and "vfs_cache_pressure". Unfortunately I don't have the time at the moment to setup a good test, but they're worth a shot if you find yourself in that situation in the future. Ref: https://www.suse.com/documenta...

And, if you dual-boot with Windows, the release notes say to use ext4, not BtrFS. https://www.suse.com/releaseno....

commit 12 July: http://kernel.suse.com/cgit/ke...

they plan on moving to something unsupported all the time

Pretty sure Linux isn't unsupported. If you're so inclined, you can pay for support if you want it

Unlike with Windows, you get your pick of providers (and yes, that includes big-name, management-friendly corporations), for any particular aspect/application of Linux.

I'm willing to bet there are still plenty of linux options you can run on that laptop. You can either install from pxe, or a disk image. I do it all the time with older equipment. If you had hundreds of machines with similar architecture, you would probably invest in back-porting of patches.

or you can do something like this:
https://www.suse.com/support/p...
https://ltsi.linuxfoundation.org/what-is-ltsi

I've suggested previously, even before the post-Snowden cloud/privacy concerns, that Microsoft could be in a very strong position if they swam across the current a little and promoted private clouds.

That is not a significant strength for Microsoft. There is no philosophical advantage to closed-source infrastructure compared to freedom-respecting software. Microsoft might win a bunch of sales because of their tight integration and simplified controls, but if you're worried about privacy, then Microsoft is not the way to go.

If you're doing a cloud deployment and you're worried about privacy, then the only real solution is to go to some open-source cloud system.

Yeah, too bad there isn't a German Linux distro

Oops

https://www.suse.com/

If I were to pay for RHEL or CentOS support, I would sooner pay SuSE https://www.suse.com/products/expandedsupport/frequently-asked-questions/#faq21

Oh jeez. Granted it's been a few years, but I had "personal support person"-level support for SLES. They could barely spell Linux, and their "support" was essentially, "let me google that for you". Their solutions were seriously taken straight from OpenSuSE forums. Any moderately complicated support query would take weeks at-best, and a couple took months. Their entire support infrastructure was built around hand-holding NetWare and Windows admins through common tasks.

Never really had a problem with RHEL though. They usually came back within a day or two with a correct or acceptable response. We never had any "your disk setup is unapproved" kind of responses. What kind of disk setup did you have to get that kind of response anyways?

Provided that RedHat will actually support it. We have sent people to the training, set up equipment to the standard *their certified instructors taught* us, and then had support hang up on us because our disk setup wasn't according to RHEL support's standard- which apparently has nothing to do with what you learn in their certified classes. WTF?

Cisco doesn't do this. Even EMC doesn't do this. But RedHat did do this, several times. RedHat support also did a lot of the whole "it must be the hardware vendor" routine. That is why we moved off of RHEL to CentOS- better patch support, more packages, and no bill for support that we haven't been able to use. I haven't run into an issue on CentOS that I couldn't solve or work around with access to their bugtracker. Same can't be said for my experience with RHEL.

If I were to pay for RHEL or CentOS support, I would sooner pay SuSE https://www.suse.com/products/expandedsupport/frequently-asked-questions/#faq21

As a number of valid questions have been asked here, I'd like to point you to details about our approach:

(1) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-overview/
(2) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-plan/
(3) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-details/

Those blogs have been published around the time when we had decided to implement UEFI Secure Boot in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3. For those who like to understand things visually, #3 has a graphic even, ...

Kind regards - Matthias G. Eckermann / MgE

As a number of valid questions have been asked here, I'd like to point you to details about our approach:

(1) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-overview/
(2) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-plan/
(3) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-details/

Those blogs have been published around the time when we had decided to implement UEFI Secure Boot in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3. For those who like to understand things visually, #3 has a graphic even, ...

Kind regards - Matthias G. Eckermann / MgE

As a number of valid questions have been asked here, I'd like to point you to details about our approach:

(1) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-overview/
(2) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-plan/
(3) https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/uefi-secure-boot-details/

Those blogs have been published around the time when we had decided to implement UEFI Secure Boot in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3. For those who like to understand things visually, #3 has a graphic even, ...

Kind regards - Matthias G. Eckermann / MgE

https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLES/11-SP2/#fate-306585

http://www.novell.com/documentation/oes11/stor_posixvol_lx/?page=/documentation/oes11/stor_posixvol_lx/data/posixvol_new_oes11sp1.html

I think there is the possibility that they might be planning to replace NSS on Open Enterprise Server with BTRFS.

Aww, how cute! England wants to come out and play. While I am happy to see that our mates from across the pond are getting themselves a nice little number cruncher - it is still little. NASA has a setup called Pleiades:

Total cores: 112,896
Total memory: 191 TB

But here's the real hard-to-fathom point. The sport two 11-dimension hypercube interconnect configurations using Infiniband QDR and DDR networking (mostly DDR). Now DDR is ~4GB/s and QDR is ~8GB/s, but Inifiniband is rarely singily-connected. Usually you multipath using four connections to the switch, which in this case bumps the transfer rate up to 16GB/s for DDR and 32GB/s for QDR. Peak theoretical speed for this system is ~240TB/s.

Oh, and it's running SUSE Linux. That off-the-shelf enough?

Last I checked, the system is running at 90% utilization. This is one heck of a cluster and it isn't just for show. Yet Pleiades only rates as #7 on the TOP500 list of supercomputers worldwide. The new list comes out in a few days. We'll see if they can keep that illustrious position.

Side note: The #1 supercomputer is running an interconnect called "Tofu". Since I'm an Infiniband guy, I'd like to know more. Right now, though, it rates very high on my silliness scale.

Microsoft Corp. and SUSE, an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group Inc., today announced a four-year extension of the groundbreaking agreement struck nearly five years ago between Microsoft and Novell Inc. for broad collaboration on Windows and Linux interoperability and support. This relationship will extend through Jan. 1, 2016, with Microsoft committed to invest $100 million in new SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates for customers receiving Linux support from SUSE.

While they tried to spin it as being from "strong customer response", the fact is that those certificate renewals were not happening, even with 75% discounts. So it was worth it to Microsoft to throw in another $100 million over the next 4 years, because Microsoft is the lead company in CPTN Holdings, the group selling the Novell patents. This deal helps compensate Attachmate (otherwise, there'd be yet another nasty court battle wrt Novell).

If you want long term support on a stable version, and you're looking at the community distributions, then you're doing it wrong. You will never get a 7 year lifetime out of a community distro. That just ain't gonna happen.

If you are in need of long term supported and stable Linux distros then you turn to the commercial versions. You need to look into something like the full version of RedHat or SLED/SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server). With SLED/SLES (the one I know/use), they do 7 year general support with service pack releases, and up to 10 year extended. http://www.suse.com/support/programs/long-term-service-pack-support.html

Of course, it is not free when you go this route, and you get what you pay for.. you want free, you take a regular update cycle and short support periods.

TFA mentions "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates" which get you support packages. It's more about the support subscription than "licenses" which aren't mentioned at all in TFA.

Nice deflection, good troll, would bite again.

Actually, the screencast is at http://studio.suse.com/, not suse.studio.com, which is an adfarm that just struck gold.

...here.

Doh. Check URLs before trying to quote them from memory.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/

If the OP meant distribution and support from a retail vendor, I know Novell still supports SLES 8 and SuSE 8 which were 2.4 based.

Then how come ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/update doesn't contain a subdirectory for any version older than 9.2?

So, i go to http://www.suse.com/ and find the SLED 10 'Pre-release Download' link. Naturally, i click it, and naturally, a screen full of 'personal info' fields pops up. Naturallly, there's this notice: "Note: Questions marked with an asterisk, *, are required." and , UNnaturally, NO field is marked with an asterisk. So i give them my name, anwayzzz.. and naturally, a pop up appears that requires me to enter my company name, address, phone, email, and on and on ..!!! Wake up, Novel! nudge nudge!!

I sort of agree with you. I'd like Novell to put out something like an official SLICK which would be optimized for GUI-less implementations and built to run in the smallest footprint possible (ie. less than 50M). If it was included as an option in the stock SuSE, then wow. Now, as for spending 2-3 hours running rpm -ev / yast pulling packages from SLES to make it usable, somehting isn't right there. First off, you should have setup a test server to determine your needs. Once that's done, create an AutoYast install script (think RH KickStart) to do your production installs (eg. yast2 autoyast). Second, even if unneeded pacakges are installed, you can easily disable the cruft services you don't need in Yast->System->Services, I'd guess in under 5 minutes start to finish.

To plug a few projects where I have gotten a lot of help when my knowledge of the subject has been limited. By all means they could have given me a RTFM response but instead they answered my questions throughly and respectfully.

Zope http://www.zope.org/
OpenNMS http://www.opennms.org/index.php/Main_Page
MailScanner http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/
MailWatch http://mailwatch.sourceforge.net/doku.php
SipX http://sipx-wiki.calivia.com/index.php/Main_Page

Before Suse for Sparc died:
http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-sparc/
(Too bad that is gone, it was a nice Sparc based distro)

The versions of Firefox shipped by SuSE use the KDE dialogs.
The newest version can be found on the SuSE ftp site.

here here here here and here

Klingon Programmer Sayings.

LVM existed 4 years ago. I used it. Remember the IBM/SUSE relationship in 2001??? Well IBM ported
LVM to Linux and it was included in SUSE since version 6.3! That's over 4 years ago. Technically
SUSE was more advanced than RedHat. The only thing Redhat was good generating money from the blood and sweat of open source developers. SUSE innovated.

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Part 1

Michael Hasenstein

This document describes the LVM in SUSE LINUX. It is freely distributable as long as it remains unchanged. The original version of this document (PDF) can be obtained at http://www.suse.com/oracle/.

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Part 1

Michael Hasenstein

This document describes the LVM in SUSE LINUX. It is freely distributable as long as it remains unchanged. The original version of this document (PDF) can be obtained at http://www.suse.com/oracle/.

SUSE has included a Logical Volume Manager since SUSE LINUX 6.3. The LVM in SUSE LINUX is Heinz Mauelshagen's implementation, the homepage is now available at http://www.sistina.com/lvm/.

SUSE Inc. 2001
Michael Hasenstein

Like I said, I've been active in the Linux Community since 1992.

LVM existed 4 years ago. I used it. Remember the IBM/SUSE relationship in 2001??? Well IBM ported
LVM to Linux and it was included in SUSE since version 6.3! That's over 4 years ago. Technically
SUSE was more advanced than RedHat. The only thing Redhat was good generating money from the blood and sweat of open source developers. SUSE innovated.

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Part 1

Michael Hasenstein

This document describes the LVM in SUSE LINUX. It is freely distributable as long as it remains unchanged. The original version of this document (PDF) can be obtained at http://www.suse.com/oracle/.

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Part 1

Michael Hasenstein

This document describes the LVM in SUSE LINUX. It is freely distributable as long as it remains unchanged. The original version of this document (PDF) can be obtained at http://www.suse.com/oracle/.

SUSE has included a Logical Volume Manager since SUSE LINUX 6.3. The LVM in SUSE LINUX is Heinz Mauelshagen's implementation, the homepage is now available at http://www.sistina.com/lvm/.

SUSE Inc. 2001
Michael Hasenstein

Like I said, I've been active in the Linux Community since 1992.

I'm not so sure it wouldn't work. It has been done already with Blender 3D, see http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Au g/2538.html

blinux
"emacspeak the complete audio desktop"
Orca
"Sun's StarOffice 8 (based on OpenOffice.org) was released earlier today. In fact, already one University campus has standardized on it! There are many new features, including improvements to Microsoft Office compatibility, support for the new OASIS OpenDocument format (which the State of Massachusettes is adopting - see pages 18-19 of the Massachusettes Enterprise Information Technology Architecture version 3.5 [available in OpenDocument format too of course]), support for the W3C XForms standard, and new migration tools to help convert the Visual Basic macros in MS Word and Excel documents to StarOffice Basic."

But the new features I most want to highlight are the accessibility enhancements. To my mind, the key accessibility improvements in StarOffice 8 (and the shortly-to-be-released OpenOffice.org 2.0) are:

      1. Dramatic improvements in desktop theme support. StarOffice 8 (and OpenOffice.org 2.0) now do an excellent job of conforming to things like the High Contrast theme in MS-Windows, or the High-Contrast-Large-Print theme in the GNOME desktop on Solaris and GNU/Linux systems.

      2. Numerous improvements to PDF export support. StarOffice 8 now supports Tagged PDF documents. Tags in PDF files are how the new Adobe Reader 7 exposes all of the accessibility information to assistive technologies and via it's own "self-reading" functionality.

      3. The usual collection of accessibility bug fixes (including one that allows Gnopernicus to properly read spreadsheet cells).

You can get a copy of StarOffice 8 right now for Windows, Linux, Solaris x86 or Solaris SPARC; in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or Swedish!

It's nice to that at the same time that StarOffice accessibility improves, acceptance and adoption of StarOffice goes up. Some might question an implied cause and effect relationship between those two facts, but I'm content to know we're clearly on the right track in both of these areas. (2005-09-27 13:55:00.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Plenty more at Google where I found these if your interested. Interesting reading, maybe some of you will even find something you want to contribute to. Considering it regards Americans with disablities, you might even be able to get a grant to do some of the work.

Let's see here:

Ubuntu, which is spelled with a "u," not an "a" is pronounced "oo-BOON-too." [source]

SUSE is not "confusing," but it is German. It's typically pronounced "Soo-sah," or "Soo-zah" depending on your dialect, but is often massacred by those who think that proper names are subject to the rules of their own language. Either way, it is most definitely NOT "Sooz" or "Susie." [source]

I don't know about you, but I would visit http://www.suse.com/ when looking for SuSE Linux information. Besides, Novell's home page has lots of linux links.

This particular link takes a little effort to find. Them initial post links to the 5 CD collection, but I'll bet most would rather have the DVD image.

though it would be nice if more people started downloading the DVD. I'm only getting 15KB/s.

The URL in case you missed it is:

http://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/10.0/iso/SUSE-10 .0-EvalDVD-i386-GM.iso.torrent

http://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/10.0/iso/SUSE-10 .0-EvalDVD-i386-GM.iso.torrent

Novell - well if you are a Novell shop, you will use NDS. You will use everything else Novell has. It is sort of like joining a secret cult.

Not true, you can use Novell's NDS (eDirectory, the LDAP server software) right on top of Linux, Unix, or Windows. The admin tools are almost all Java based or otherwise accessible so you aren't locked in there (clients and management tools for Linux, Unix and Windows). Novell can manage the rights, er permissions, er privileges for clients of any flavor (because a directory services solution is about managing the resources on the network) - and has less bloat and more security than Active Directory.

Novell is my choice hands down. It isn't the nightmare product it used to be. Quite flexable, scalable and for all intents and purposes "open". This product actually follows standards! In my experience it also prices cheaper for clients than Active Directory, although you never know because I'm sure it has changed.

The person who asked this question initially said that the only other option to Active Directory was A cobbled-together solution based as much as possible on OSS (as no direct equivalent exists)

This simply isn't true. There is eDirectory and it's better! (PDF) Wake up people! It's 2005 and there is a better option out there and to top it all off they are a Linux company too.

100-99.9999999% != .00001%

Re-read your own sentences. They contradict eachother.

Once again you are a lying ignorant fuck. YAST resolves dependencies for you

This isn't "for you". Any average person seeing this will get confused. Hell, BSD's ports tree resolves dependencies too, but does that make it easy?

That's one of the main reasons Windows is generally easier. The only "dependency" conflicts are dll files which are handled automatically without the user's knowledge.

Are you not familiar with english? What you're trying to say and what you actually say don't match up. How many more times must I show your own contradictions?

Given that your audience has a range of technical ability, just showing them software isn't going to cut it. One idea would be to grab a bunch of customised knoppix distros. For example, there's a Linux Audio LiveCD which, if topped up with lots of Creative Commons samples, would probably allow you to have a pretty good attempt at some on-the-spot DJing (disclaimer: I haven't tried the CD, I have no idea if it's any good). I don't know if there's an equivalent for video, but that would also be cool. And, of course, there's always Games Knoppix. Burn a bunch of each type and pile 'em up on the table so people can grab whatever they want on the way out.

Two important caveats: firstly, make sure the CDs run properly on the demonstration computer - I know that Knoppix has some trouble with my mum's new LCD monitor. Secondly, if you want to demo more than one LiveCD, you'll probably want to have more than one machine rather than waiting for each Knoppix instance to shut down and the next one to boot up.