Novell to Help Port Applications to Linux

An anonymous reader writes "eWeek is reporting that: "Novell announced the program at its European BrainShare 2004 tradeshow in Barcelona, Spain." "Under the initiative, leading software and hardware vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Intel Corp., Oracle Corp. and Scali Inc. will work with Novell help their software partners deploy their platforms and solutions on SUSE Linux, according to Novell Inc."

Comments

Good news for Suse...

[tcopeland]

...and to help more people get a crack at running Suse, if you've got some spare bandwidth, fire up a BitTorrent client and head over to The Linux Mirror Project and help mirror the Suse torrent.

The tracker shows lots of leechers for that distro... if you can, hop in and help out!

Who could use some help

[DaveInAustin]

Maybe they could help MS port office.

Re:Who could use some help

[rainman_bc]

You mean like Crossover Office?

Re:Who could use some help

[SunPin]

Screw Office. Everyone uses office for one reason: The Microsoft marketing department.

Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and Access--especially Access--are not valid reasons for parting with your money.

Microsoft represents everything wrong about the world consumers have to deal with. Since there's no profit in a _solved_ problem and a _stable_ solution, everything in this country is built to break.

Re:Who could use some help

[timmyf2371]

I almost agree with Access, but in honesty it's perfect for those small database-enabled functions I require without having to spend ages setting up the relevant database and access pages using PHP/MySQL (which I use for larger database projects.

Now, let's look at Excel - Excel in my opinion is a fantastic application. It's great for calculations, supports copy and paste from other applications with figures etc, and is a really handy application to have around - possibly even more useful that Word itsself.

Powerpoint is the bain of my existance. Suffice it to say, it empowers PHBs with capabilities to create huge, annoying, awful-looking documents with information which could be distributed in a two-line email.

Re:Who could use some help

[killjoe]

Welcome to vendor lock. That's exactly the way MS wanted it to be. Congratulations you are unable to switch to a lower cost alternative!.

It's like those monkey traps you hear about. You know where you make a hole in the box just big enough for the monkey to put his hand in and grab a fist full of peanuts. The problem is that once the fist is full of peanuts the monkey can't get his hand out. So he sits there until the hunter comes by, trapped by his unwillingness to let go a handful of peanuts.

Re:Who could use some help

[mvdw]

I don't believe that this is necessarily a valid argument anymore. Abiword will open Word documents, Gnumeric will open excel documents, and openoffice will of course open both. You may lose some formatting and/or images, but many files will open correctly in these free softwares. You can even convert your word documents using wvWare, another free piece of software.

Do you have to edit them, or are they read-only? If they are read-only, you might want to try "wvPDF" and a small script (for f in find / -name \*.doc ; do wvPDF $f $(basename $f .doc).pdf ; done)

Note the script is not tested, but it shouldn't do anything *too* bad to your originals...

Alternatively, if you would like to edit the files later, try wvLatex (then edit using Lyx later), wvDVI, wvAbw (edit using abiword), wvRTF (edit using openoffice), or to just extract the text use wvText. Or you can do a combination of a number of them (generate the pdf and the RTF source, for example). No guarantees, YMMV, IANAL, etc etc etc, but for the 1/2 hour it take to get it all running, it may well be worth your time.

Re:Who could use some help

[phaetonic]

Yeah its right . It's also Open Source! Go Novell!

saw this coming...

[MachineShedFred]

What, did you think that Novell threw all those millions of dollars at SuSE for fun? Oh no, SuSE is the core of the next NetWare.

Re:saw this coming...

[jhoffoss]

No, no, no. You have it all wrong.

Linux will rule the world through Novell. Novell will be nothing but our puppet.

<insert evil laugh here>

Re:saw this coming...

[mrchaotica]

Because of the GPL, it's not possible for there to be a "'Microsoft' of Linux." Microsoft dominates with proprietary and non-standards-compliant software, which can't happen with Linux because anyone can copy it.

Yes, people can be upset when a poor technology <cough>RPM</cough> dominates, but they can't be forced to use it. The only possible issue is software patents as a lock-in mechanism, and I don't think anyone would put up with Novell trying use that -- they'd just switch. They'd have to already be locked in first.

LSB?

[cpn2000]

I have not read the FA, but I do hope they port applications to the LSB rather than just to their distro.

Re:LSB?

[PhilipPeake]

I don't want to start any sort of flamewar on this, so just take this a my opinion FWIW:

LSB is fine, and a worthwhile effort, BUT (you knew there was but coming, didn't you?) it is FAR from a complete standard for Linux. It just codifies what are prety much already consensus and de-facto opinions on standards already present in most versions of Linux.

This is useful work, but by no means sufficient to develop against. LSB cound be more proactive and push standards where they are needed, but the push-back they would get from "the community" would be intense, and could end up devaluing the good work they currently do.

Most of the Linux distros out there do aim for LSB conformance anyway. If they don't quite make it, its not by much, and if they don't try -- well, maybe you need to give your patronage to those that do.

As far as I kno, SuSe are committed to following the LSB, so applications ported to it will naturally be LSB conformant ports - for as far as that takes them.

Let's stop breaking Linux up.

[garcia]

"But this is also aimed at Windows software vendors, Unix software vendors, or vendors who'd developed for other flavors of Linux but who'd like run on SUSE Linux, too," He said.

I love the fact that Linux has the flexibility of having multiple flavors but I really think that making the flavors incompatible is a roadblock for wide acceptance.

People who develop for Windows are going to look at Linux and say, "but if we want to reach everyone we have to deal with RedHat, SUSE, Foo, and DoubleFoo."

Shouldn't companies that want to support Linux as a viable alternative be pushing for a standard to be followed?

Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up.

[jhoffoss]

First, let's correct your previous statement. Novell and SuSE are one, and so there's not as much for a developer to struggle to conform to. Second, as was announced on /., the WSJ, and several other sources a few days ago, IBM, Novell, HP, and several other very major vendors all announced support of LSB-2. Whether they're posting placards and advertising everywhere or not, if I'm a developer for Linux tools, I'm going to code to LSB-2 spec, not to a platform (RH/SuSE/FC/LM/etc.)

Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up.

[Moraelin]

Disclaimer: I'm a bit of a Windows fan, so your mileage may vary.

That said, you know, actually they're not that incompatible.

I've ran for example WebSphere and Eclipse on SuSE, Gentoo, and a coleague installed them on RedHat too. My brother runs them on Mandrake. Binaries too, no recompiling needed. No problems there. I also don't recall having to get a different binary version of, say, OOo for different Linux flavours. It runs just as crappy on them all.

It's not yet perfect, yes, but differences tend to be minor. E.g., where they put their scripts or some config files, or whether KDE and Gnome go into /opt or into /usr. Nothing that a desktop application really needs to know about.

Linux still has compatibility problems of its own, in the form of the DLL hell. (Well, .so but same idea.) Each F/OSS app seems to want its very own version of some library, which in turns requires a bunch of other libraries to be in a whole other version than what you have on the system.

But that's hardly something that has to do with distro fragmentation. You're just as likely to run into that problem on any distro.

Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Yes.

People who develop for Windows are going to look at Linux and say, "but if we want to reach everyone we have to deal with RedHat, SUSE, Foo, and DoubleFoo."

Mostly it tends to be the Foo and DoubleFoo distros that break compatibility. This is for two main reasons.

"Boutique" Linux distros are developed are often developed by fanatics who simply don't care if "Application X" works on their distro, because obviously, "Application X" is crap, and possibly not licensed according to their politics. These distros are not for the "mainstream" and will probably fade away quickly.

Other "Boutique" distros have some very specific uses in mind, such as those that require ultra-stability or ultra-security. I was going to say like dedicated web servers, but I think the *BSDs have that sewn up. With these very narrow focuses, wide compatibility is rarely an issue.

I know people are going to flame me for writing this, but in The Enterprise, the only real Linux players right now are Novell/SuSE and RedHat. A lot of this has to do with vender support, which distros such as Gentoo/Debian/Slackware and so on do not have.

Re:Let's stop breaking Linux up.

[mrchaotica]

You're just as likely to run into that problem on any distro.

No, you're not -- it's a package management issue, and different distros have different package management. I've never run into "library hell" with Gentoo, because there's a single repository, and so everything it tested to work together. I presume Debian and BSD would work equally well. God help you if you're using Red Hat or something, though.

The enemy of my enemy ...

[YetAnotherName]

... is my friend, as the old saying goes.

And so long as they keep the Unix trademark from SCO with the force of a thousand lawyers with lasers strapped to their heads, they're fine by me.

logical next step after acquisition of SuSE

[nomad63]

Somehow, someway, Novell needs to make money out of the deal. By basically giving away their product, it is not likely to happen anytime soon. But if they add an arsenal of software which is certified to run on Linux platform, the landscape drastically changes and these changes will favor Novell.

A big round of applause for this novel (pun intended) idea of Novell...

Re:color me n00b

[robla]

Because the major distros come with different:
* versions of X Windows
* versions of GNOME or KDE
* versions of glibc
* versions of the ABI
* package management systems

When you are distributing your software in source code form for developers to compile themselves, it's no big deal. When you are trying to release a binary that works in a supported way, it's a hassle.

This hassle isn't limited to closed source software. For example, look how many download options Abiword has. Regardless of what "should" work, there's been enough hassles in the past that most folks want binaries tailored to their specific platform.

Rob

Re:Divide and conquer

[drinkypoo]

1. All the BSDs are not entirely different, and commonly share code back and forth amongst them.
2. There's plenty of extra bullshit, but it's in ports where it belongs.
3. BSD is obscure when it comes to the desktop, but then so is Linux.
4. Solaris does not have its roots in BSD exactly:
   
   1. Solaris is SunOS plus Openwindows.
      
   2. Openwindows has traditionally meant Sun's X11 plus the openlook environment - which AFAIK still comes with the system.
5. Solaris 1.x contains SunOS 4.x, which is based on BSD.
6. Solaris 2.x contains SunOS 5.x, which is based on System V. If you choose to install the proper packages you get a bunch of BSD binaries in /usr/ucb or something like that.

SunOS4 and SunOS5 are totally different and mostly separate operating systems.

Re:color me n00b

[jedidiah]

Oracle RDBMS 10g installs and runs just fine under Debian Sarge despite Oracle only really wanting it to run on Suse and RHEL.

Linux "fragmentation" is mostly hype.

Trend?

[HangingChad]

Makes me wonder if Linux is going to stratify into corporate and home user flavors? SUSE and RedHat for the office. And the raft of others for home users.

I don't think it's bad either way, just curious as to how it's going to shake out. Any Linux usage is good in my book. More apps available is very good. More alternatives to the bloated wares of Castle Redmondore, priceless.

How about a program that "helps" hardware vendors

[Featureless]

...release specs and/or open-source device drivers, and become "Linux compliant"?

I guess if the big companies want to lend a hand, that'd be my suggestion.

Let's be serious, drivers are one of the biggest issues, crossing all of the common uses of Linux. Why are we, in 2004, still stuck in the 1994 mentality, still begging most hardware manufacturers for specs and open drivers, and still reverse-engineering? I mean, it's probably fair to say Linux is over the hump in terms of name recognition at this point.

Sure, it's a lot better than it was, but our mindshare in the PC hardware world is abyssmal compared to what it should be. Even hardware vendors that "support" us still often do so with binary drivers; often shitty, scary ones that never get rev'd.

Can the myth that closed-source drivers, or secret specs, are somehow good for a hardware business still be thriving in 2004? Is it really that much more important than the sales you miss out on when your competitors embrace Linux before you do?

Finally a Novel Topic on Slashdot

[Jungle guy]

Some might not have noticed, but it seems to be the first topic with the "N" logo from Novell. I don't like the company in particular, but you to admit that Novell is betting high on Linux and open source - although they are not abandoning their closed source software like Zenworks, a strategye they call "shared source".

Not easy to port from Microsoft to KDE librairies

[effco]

Here is a replied I received from the UltraEdit peoples :

Hello Frederic,

Thanks for your message and suggestion. Ian has looked into this and
other tools. The biggest barrier here is that much of UltraEdit's
code is based on MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes). Because of this
porting UltraEdit to Linux is not a minor undertaking as functions
using MFC would have to be completely rewritten from scratch.

Thanks, Troy

Thursday, September 16, 2004, 5:28:25 AM, you wrote:

fcsb> Hello,
fcsb> is there any plan to port UltraEdit to Linux ?
fcsb> If so, you could for example use the Qt C++ framework
fcsb> from Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com/) to speed up the
fcsb> process
fcsb> so that UltraEdit would available under KDE
fcsb> (www.kde.org), the Linux's most used desktop system.
fcsb> There is plenty of Linux text editor but none of them has
fcsb> ever reached the level of quality of UltraEdit,
fcsb> so I really think you could gaim some market shares up there too !
fcsb> sheers,
fcsb> Frederic

Nothing new

[EmbeddedJanitor]

All OS vendors provide services like this (ie assistance getting your apps going on their offering). MS, IBM, HP,... all do. DEC and all it's long-dead cronies did too. So do middle-ware vendors like Oracle.

This is particularly important for companies like Novell who are targeting corporate customers, most of whom run tailored software for their business purposes (as well as the office stuff for their admin, and other general purpose software).

Re:Not easy to port from Microsoft to KDE librairi

[smurf975]

From the bits and pieces of news and info that I know of wxWindows, porting a MFC app to wxWindows (cross platform) is 98% of the time just a matter of search and replace.

So technically there is no excuse, however they were responding to a QT framework question.