Brainshare Reports: NLD 10, Novell's Linux Switch

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

Comments

fp?

[N3WBI3]

and already the site is 404

Re:fp?

[OECD]

and already the site is 404

Not to me, but I use lynx and seem to have less problems with overloaded servers.

Anyway, from TFA: Also planned for the release, due out next year, is F-Spot, a personal photo management application.

What are they going to call the next version? ;-)

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, it runs on GNOME Mono...it would've been damn easy to just slap a G in there somewhere but nooooo, they had to be different.

Re:fp?

[pavera]

um..
how does the FP get modded redundant?

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also planned for the release, due out next year, is F-Spot, a personal photo management application.

What are they going to call the next version?

"Goatse" should be fitting when Microsoft start sueing anybody running mono for patent infringement. Novell provide indemnification, so if you pay either the Microsoft or Novell tax you may be ok.

Or you could tell them to shove their CLR.

Saving money

[Spodlink05]

They only took out two Microsoft licenses?

Re:Saving money

[Jesus_666]

Yes, they bought one copy of Windows and installed it on all of their machines, as is common practice. The other licence is because they lost the first one's CD code.

Re:Saving money

[willabr]

Ray Norda unavailable for comment.

Re:Saving money

[JudgeFurious]

"The other licence is because they lost the first one's CD code."

See this is why Novell got their butts slapped down by Microsoft back in the 90's. First mistake, they paid for one copy of Windows. That's just dumb and you know that out of all their employees someone had a copy laying around they could have used. Then they go and pay for it again? Just to replace a missing CD Key? Suckers, they could have found that one the web in about 5 minutes.

This is why Microsoft is in top people, they'd have pirated Netware in a heartbeat. They probably did back in the day.

Re:Saving money

[perdelucena]

Newsforge confirms Microsoft is dying

Re:Saving money

[Pentavirate]

I think the argument needs to shift from Linux being cheaper to Linux being better. Microsoft and Novell (as well as other Linux companies) will argue forever which OS has the lowest TCO. Companies don't want the lowest cost, they want the best value, even if it costs more. That's why people would rather purchase Cadillacs instead of Metros.

Re:Saving money

[mattspammail]

NDS was the model for ActiveDirectory. You think MS invented that? Heck, no. Novell sold that to them. Novell was the only Network OS in town way back when. MS bought Netware Directory Services from Novell, and thus bypassed infancy, toddlerhood, etc.

Re:Saving money

[T-Ranger]

What the fuck are you talking about?

- Novell did not sell NDS to Microsoft. At least as far back as DR-DOS days Novell has loathed Microsoft; I doubt they have ever sold them anything except end user licenses
- Novell, while long king, was never alone in the NOS space
- Banyan, with VINES, was a significant competior to Netware
- Banyan StreetTalk came before NDS

StreetTalk, NDS/eDirectory, AD are all x500 directories. They have a common model that traces its roots back to the mid 1980's and OSI.

Microsoft was known to be working on a directory server in at least back as far as 1997.. ie after NT 4.0 shipped. It took them more then a major release cycle to get AD to a working state. NDS shipped in 1996.

Re:Saving money

[Doc Ruby]

I dunno, "cheaper" is working for Microsoft a lot better than "better". And everyone at work knows that "better" is debatable, while "cheaper" is more final for the PHBs who make the decisions - even when "cheaper" is wrong.

Re:Saving money

[mattspammail]

You don't think anyone from Netware got their palms greased with Microsoft money for trade secrets? Hell, much of the terminology is identical (heck, maybe the parent was right. maybe they did just steal it outright). If that's not how it happened, then they probably just stole some of the initial NDS developers, but I'm betting that money changed hands.

Okay, with the Banyan thing, sure. You know what I meant though. (Companies that are still around)

Re:Saving money

[T-Ranger]

Anyone from Netware? WTF does that mean? Netware is a product.

The GP did not say that MS hired away Novell developers. He said that MS bought technology from Novell, specificly NDS. Sorry, never happened. Has MS hired ex-Novell employees? Almost definitly, happens all the time; software developement, accountants, MBAs, executives.. Has MS paid unusually large amounts to ex-Novellers to have them "defect"? Perhaps. Without any doubt MS got the lead dev of VMS to defect to work on NT, and he got them to hire on many of his Digital coworkers. But hiring developers is no where near the same thing as buying technology.

Look at the historical context: mid to late 90s. Windows 3.11 ("for workgroups") and NT 3.5 had been shipping for a while, with built in networking. Windows 95 was shipping, with built in and reasonably usefull p2p networking. The low end "workgroup" server market for Novell just died out. But Netware 4, with NDS, had moved beyond isolated servers, it was about managing a network. If you needed no servers, or exactly 1 server, MS stuff was "good enough". But if you were managing multiple servers, multiple sites... you want "directory services" and NDS. Novell isnt (and wasnt) stupid, they were fully aware that their major competitor was the "good enough" p2p networking of 9x, and small workgroup NT servers. Mayby they were even resigined to that fact. But NDS is the foundation of virtually everything Novell has produced since it was introductd. Novell would not sell the NDS technology to anyone at any price, least of all their primary competitor.

Re:Saving money

[Pentavirate]

That's why the commercial distrubutions of Linux have to better articulate why they are better. Price can be a part of why they're better but it shouldn't be the only thing that we harp on. PHBs might like cheaper in some instances, but "free" will make them very nervous (and most PHBs don't distinguish between beer and liberty).

Re:Saving money

[Anonymous Coward]

You really don't know what you are talking about.Streetalk was released way before NDS, and it actually worked. There was many a Novell network that died because of serious bugs in NDS in the early days

Re:Saving money

[MrResistor]

Hell, much of the terminology is identical

It's called x500. It's an industry standard, much like the better known 7-layer networking stack. You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about it in your local community college's Network Operating Systems class.

Re:Saving money

[MrResistor]

Please! If that were true, Active Directory would be more than just a cheap immitation of NDS, which in my admitedly limited experience is an absolute joy to work with.

Version Ten

[SA Stevens]

Novell Linux Desktop 10?

When did the nine previous versions come out?

Re:Version Ten

[CameronGary]

NLD is descended from SuSE, which is up to version 9

Re:Version Ten

[FidelCatsro]

I think since its basicaly Suse , they are jumping on the suse numbering .Since the last version of SuSe was 9.2 then NLD 10 is a logical follow up .
This also keeps the numbering in good sted with a few of the other distros

Re:Version Ten

[SA Stevens]

The SuSe versioning is the 'logical' answer.

Your second answer, which has to do with marketing, is probably the main reason.

This is no different than Windows NT 'magically' starting at version 3.1 I suppose.

Re:Version Ten

[Vardamir]

There are two kinds of people, those that read 10, and those who do not ...

Re:Version Ten

[mattyrobinson69]

My theory: that winNT started at 3.1 because they stole code from 31 other companies to create it, unfortunately they stole the worst bits. The point of the decimal point still escapes me though.

Re:Version Ten

[walt-sjc]

"Most versions only go to ten, but mine goes to eleven. It's one higher."

blatently ripped off from Spinal Tap

Re:Version Ten

[Hobadee]

So will there be a SuSE 10, or will it just be NLD 10? ...I'm waiting on SuSE 10, so hopefully there will be one....

Re:Version Ten

[WwWonka]

Novell Linux Desktop 10?When did the nine previous versions come out?

Novell's CEO is a huge Bo Derek fan, duh.

Re:Version Ten

[FidelCatsro]

I would expect suse 10 to be next , iirc it went ..7.0 ,7.1,7.2,8.0,8.1,8.2,9.0 etc

Re:Version Ten

[Anonymous Coward]

10 as in 2^1+2^0=2

Re:Version Ten

[Hobadee]

...They had a version 7.3, FYI, but I do expect that a v.10 will be on it's way soon if it is to come. My question though was more regarding if NLD was a replacement for SuSE, or rather a sort of Novell branded fork.

Re:Version Ten

[Aldric]

Novell's plan is to have NLD as the stable corporate desktop while SuSE Pro has the latest and greatest code, IIRC. I think 9.3 is due fairly soon.

Re:Version Ten

[ckaminski]

Are you kidding? An office workspace OS with networking for the X86 that didn't suck ass? NT 3.1 was many things, but horrible it was not. While Netware may have been a better server at the time, when it came to 32bit computing, NT was where it was at. Witness it's phenomenally rapid adoption.

NT started at 3.1 because they wanted to market it synonymously with Windows 3.1. Microsoft wanted to create the impression they were the same, but that NT was better (and it was, on all accounts, except DOS game support).

Now, remember, Microsoft cannibalized a lot of DEC's VMS team, and that's why Windows is so anti-unixy. :-D

Re:Version Ten

[mattyrobinson69]

Yes i was joking except the bit about NT 3.1 being crap.

I forgot (for some reason) that it was the mid-90's and NT was actually quite good.

Re:Version Ten

[jocknerd]

If thats the case, why would they be including Beagle in NLD 10? Isn't it still in early development?

Re:Version Ten

[MrResistor]

Because Beagle provides functionality they feel is vital to the product?

(I know nothing about Beagle, but this just seems obvious to me)

Re:Version Ten

[MrResistor]

As pointed out above, there was a 7.3. There was also a 6.4. I don't pretend to understand what they're versioning system is based on, but I can say it's more complex than what you've laid out.

Singing the 404 blooz

[AtariAmarok]

Already 404? Sometimes, even though the OS is Linux, the server is still kleenex.

Re:Singing the 404 blooz

[cfalcon]

... and this is flamebait how?

The same goes for them as Ubuntu

[gt_swagger]

Linkage to my comment in the Ubuntu news topic, which very much applies to Novell too: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143486&cid=120 28361

Re:The same goes for them as Ubuntu

[Daengbo]

How's this? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143486&cid=120 28361

Exit strategy

[YodaToo]

Now if all of you just rush to buy shares of Novell, I can finally sell mine. Thanks in advance.

Re:Exit strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

speaking of stocks
if i have 16000 shares that i paid a buck each for and the company has gone bankrupt that's $16,000 i can use to offset profit on another stock, right?

a bit more complicated
say a corporation has $45,000 in uncollectable debt and that corp is going down the tubes and never expects any profit to offset that loss. Can I buy that loss for say $1000 and then offset $45,000 in capital gains?

Re:Exit strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have to be "realized" losses and gains. The IRS doesn't care until you sell.
Keep in mind that you don't have to clame all your gains/losses in one year, if you have huge gains you can break it up among multiple years (same with losses). Check with your tax accountant (or read the instructions for Schedule E)

Alone?

[Otter]

Consultants and software sellers of all stripes won't soon run out of TCO arguments for the products they want to push, but Novell claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees alone.

Y'see, the point of "total" is that you're not looking at individual costs "alone"...

Re:Alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please elaborate...

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

I think what is meant is that you can say you saved $900,000 last year alone on MS licenses, but what did you pay in new costs to make up for it?

Now, Novell is in a unique situation. Since they own SuSE they don't have to pay SuSE license fees, so i'm sure that saves them a chunk of change, and they don't have to purchase service contracts because they're their own service facility.

Re:Alone?

[jericho4.0]

The OP is pointing out that _any_ switch to linux would save you MS license fees, that's a given. The question is; Does the increased cost of training, support, and administration swallow that savings?

IMHO, it's pretty clear that TCO is lower with a partial or total switch to linux. There are exeptions, like small businesses without IT resources, but by and large, IT costs go down.

Re:Alone?

[GreyWolf3000]

Umm, provided you have some competent SuSE people (which Novell does) then you don't have any costs whatsoever.

Why would someone pay SuSE license fees? You can do an ftp install for free (or at least last time I checked...haven't used SuSE in a while).

Re:Alone?

[Thud457]

Linux is free only if Novell's time is worth nothing.

or sumpthin'.

Re:Alone?

[Otter]

I think what is meant is that you can say you saved $900,000 last year alone on MS licenses, but what did you pay in new costs to make up for it?

Sure, that's the correct question. I suppose you could read the original comment that way, although I would have expected anyone making that point to have phrased it the way you did.

Re:Alone?

[lakeland]

My (limited) experience is that businesses with strong IT resources have all other IT management costs going down as well, to the point that money saved on license fees is just a small bonus. And that businesses with zero IT skills have those costs shoot up, swallowing all savings and then some.

Re:Alone?

[Daniel Phillips]

I think what is meant is that you can say you saved $900,000 last year alone on MS licenses, but what did you pay in new costs to make up for it?

Right, and also what other costs might you save?

daily malware cleaning
lower hardware cost
license auditing costs
downtime costs


Not to mention, having access to thousands of free applications, many that are best of breed.

Re:Alone?

[NatteringNabob]

The Total will end up being a lot more than $900,000 per year. Microsoft TCO studies notwithstanding, anybody that has actually tried to keep both a Windows Network and a Linux/Unix network up and running will tell you that the Unix boxes are a lot less effort. Just being able to NFS mount applications from a handful of application servers instead of installing on every single machine is a godsend, as is the total lack of real, live Linux viruses. Again, MS FUD notwithstanding, theoretical viruses are much easier for a system administrator to deal with than actual ones.

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

No corporation is going to trust their desktop to an FTP'd version. They're going to buy official licenses so that they get official support.

Re:Alone?

[Bradac_55]

Hence the reason you can not do FTP installs from the website since Novell finished the restructure and website merge.

- Brad

Re:Alone?

[duderdice]

Looking at it from a business investment point of view, let's find the return on investment. Say it takes a cool $7.2 million to make this transition (6,000 employees spending 40 hours training/learning/downtime @ $30/hr = $7.2 million). Shaving $900K per year pays you back in 8 years ($900K * 8 = $7.2 mil), because those licensing costs they saved are recurring. Using the 'rule of 72' from investing, if we make our money back in 8 years, we're getting roughly 9% return on an investement. That's probably close to the ROI cut off of most businesses, and when you factor in the competitive advantages of

1. not supporting a competitor
2. eating your own dog food and learning from it
3. being on the leading edge of change in the tech industry

sounds like Novell has made a pretty good move. Of course this business case is shot if the costs of transition go thru the roof, but if you do it intelligently (i.e. stepwise, like it sounds they are doing), its easily managed and should be a success. I wish they were hiring, though, because they seem like one of the few companies with a head on its shoulders about how to deal with opportunity and change in this brave new world of Free software. Of course, if my numbers don't convince you, just use common sense - most of the rest of the world is embracing GNU/Linux pretty strongly and if we don't .... well, let's just say "You can pry my Longhorn DVDs from my cold, jobless fingers!"

Re:Alone?

[jabuzz]

Clearly you are not playing the Microsoft game, if you are visiting computers to install software. If you have yourself a net installed managed network, backed by an Active Directory you can just as easily install an application on 1, 10, 100 or a 1000 computers. You need to know what you are doing, but it does work and it is an absolute godsend in managing Windows desktops. Everyone is properly patched and up to date, all with the latest virus definitions and all without leaving your office.

Though personally I would prefer if all my users migrated to Linux.

Re:Alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods, how exactly is this flamebait?

Parent post is actually meaningful if you take a moment to read it.

Re:Alone?

[Kjella]

IMHO, it's pretty clear that TCO is lower with a partial or total switch to linux. There are exeptions, like small businesses without IT resources,

Possibly. But there's also a clear indication to me that many large businesses with custom VB/VBA/Windows-only code which would have huge switch-over costs.

Smaller businesses usually run on your standard Wintel machine doing standard office work in MS office. They could switch to Linux if there was only someone to support them.

Kjella

Re:Alone?

[misleb]

They might be their own service facility, but they still have to pay someone to do the work, just like anyone else.

-matthew

Re:Alone?

[replicant108]

Suse "license fees"???

What are you on about???

Re:Alone?

[Xerp]

Indeed. Especially if you are upgrading from a "non-current" version of any Windows. The migration from a Windows 2000 Server and Desktop environment to a Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP desktop will have you paying through the nose. Gone are things like desktop equivalence.

You'll find that in year 1, sure, the main savings are from cap. ex; things like CALs and boxed software. Look into year 2 and through the stability and ease of management of a Linux environment, plus the extensive free application base and wide support network and you've doubled your savings again. Training, support and administration costs are now actually *lower* than under a Windows environment. Check the 5-year time line and you're wondering how anyone could even consider using Microsoft software.

Re:Alone?

[NatteringNabob]

The point is that you shouldn't be installing software on every desktop in the first place, whether the synchronization is automated or not. The fact that you do means that you must store and virus scan those bits everywhere instead of in one or a handful of central servers. This is something that Unix got right ages ago that Microsoft never has. The fact that there are tools that make a bad design usable doesn't make it a good design. Though you are right that it does make the TCO closer to Linux/Unix TCO.

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

True, they do have to pay someone to do the work, but that's a someone they have on staff anyways because they're providing support for others as well. Basically, everyone buying a copy of SuSE is paying Novell's support costs.

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

You can't download a copy of SuSE for free, and there are licensing restrictions on some of the code on the CD's. Apparently, you can't even FTP install anymore.

Re:Alone?

[killjoe]

The same arguments could be applied for most enterprises. You don't have to buy SUSE (or any other linux) and most enterprises have helpdesks who will get paid no matter what and at least a handful of unix sysadmins.

If you read about their plan it was pretty slick, They first got rid of all MS products on the desktop except for windows. They used groupwise for email and calendering, they installed iFolder on all the desktops and trained their people to save all their documents on it, they installed firefox and openoffice.

Once the users were used to this toolset they simply switched the OS and kept the same application stack.

This is the smart way to switch. First get rid of outlook, office, and IE. Then when you switch the OS users barely notice.

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

Not really. Novell has a staff of support people who know the OS and apps inside and out because they sell that service to others. They simply tap into that for their own help desk support, which is subsidized by everyone that has bought a copy of SuSE or a support contract.

Sure, a large company will have a help desk, but not of the same calibre that a distro vendor would have.

Re:Alone?

[replicant108]

What are you talking about???

Re:Alone?

[ckaminski]

Well Hmm... so this SuSe 9.1 personal iso I grabbed off the FTP site at ftp.suse.com this weekend must be a figment of my imagination?

Or the FTP CD available at: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.2/iso

I just got a copy of SuSE 9.2 on DVD attached to this months Linux Format. I couldn't wait for the 9.2 Personal DVD download (not sure where the link was from, one of the Novell mirrors, I think) to complete (96 hours).

The personal edition leaves off all the servers, apache, mysql, postgres... suckage. :-/

Re:Alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not to mention, having access to thousands of free applications, many that are best of breed."

Name 50 of these free best of breed appps that also have no Windows platform ports.

Re:Alone?

[iamwahoo2]

Name 376,000 apps that are best of breed for Windows.

Re:Alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

We saved on Microsoft license fees by sticking with Windows XP, with only 5 networked computers allowed, and making the employees stand in line to get to a computer to invoice the customer they have in tow.

Re:Alone?

[Feztaa]

Umm, provided you have some competent SuSE people (which Novell does) then you don't have any costs whatsoever.

They had to pay the employees something.

Re:Alone?

[HermanAB]

Well, if you actually RTFA, then you would have seen that Novell said that the training costs are negligable, measuring only a few hours per person.

Re:Alone?

[ckaminski]

Ah, but there's a difference...

When I had my desktop full of installed applications, I could still function if the network got taken down. Which, while it happened infrequently enough, happened enough that having the entire building not working on ANYTHING at all was not an option.

Re:Alone?

[1lus10n]

Small companies with bad admin/helpdesks cannot keep up with windows problems (virus's, adware etc) so I wouldnt expect them to have the ability and time to migrate like Novell is. However they could just hire Novell to do it for them, the general idea being that the savings in the long run with recoup and eventually surpass any upfront costs. If you cannot get a business loan to offset the upfront costs your business probably has bigger issues than IT.

Re:Alone?

[misleb]

I seriously doubt that a company the size of Novell is going to take people off the support lines to be sysadmin for a day. ;-)

-matthew

Re:Alone?

[SCVirus]

AH, but training support and administration can be outsourced, license fees cannot.

Re:Alone?

[natd]

Your statement is 100% incorrect.

I know at least one corporation using a version which was FTP'd - mine.

Next you will be suggesting that no company has Windows without a service contract, or that everyone wants one. Many people are happy to look after things themselves, althought in the MS world we NEED the frequent fixes, only because there are so many things NEEDING fixing.

Re:Alone?

[marafa]

thats an easy one: http://www.cybersource.com.au/press/linux_vs_windo ws_tco_comparison.html and this TCO even tries to put MS in good favor even. yet, sadly, it failed to measure up.
___
why are all my comments rated -1 ?

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

Are you kidding me? That report doesn't even TRY to be nice to MS. That report claims that Postfix is a replacement for Exchange (totally ignoring group calendaring and other features). It claims that the Gimp is a replacement for Photoshop, something no graphic artist would ever agree to, and most of all, the prices they are quoting are *RETAIL* prices, not the prices you get as a corporate licensor. For example, they list the price of Windows as $299, but my company gets the entire desktop bundle for $139 per user per year. That includes CAL's, Desktop OS, Office, etc.... Significantly less than their claiming.

Hell, it also conveniently ignores that much of the "line of business" software will have to be rewritten.

Re:Alone?

[eikonos]

You saved money by making customers wait?

Re:Alone?

[gilesjuk]

Exactly, as soon as you write a package that is popular with business you will end up with two situations:

1. Competition from Microsoft, either proper competition or monopolistic stuff (bundling, altering the OS to break your app).

2. Takeover attempts.

Re:Alone?

[MrResistor]

Large companies do actually pay themselves for their own products. Yeah, it seems kind of pointless and circular, but it's necessary to keep their accounting straight.

Now, it may be true that they aren't paying for service contracts or licensing fees, but if that's the case it's due to the nature of Linux, not an inherent benefit of eating their own dog food.

Re:Alone?

[man_of_mr_e]

Whether or not they pay themselves is irrelevant as the money never leaves the company, so it doesn't cos "the company" any real money. It's just an accounting technicality. The companies bottom line is not effected by it.

Re:Alone?

[MrResistor]

Tell that to the PHBs.

Marketspeak

[Camel Pilot]

Why stop at 10 why not release at 100 or 1000. While your at it tack on a "turbo" or "advanced" moniker.

Re:Marketspeak

[hal2814]

I think it's to go along with SUSE numbering, which is currently in version 9.x. However, I am hoping that enough folks will hack NLD 10 that Novell will release "Super Novell Linux Desktop 10 EX Turbo Alpha Hyper Fighting" in response.

Re:Marketspeak

[Anonymous Coward]

Or even 95, 98, 2000, XP or 2003?

Even reduced media edition sounds cool :)

Re:Marketspeak

[Jesus_666]

Why stop at 10 why not release at 100 or 1000. While your at it tack on a "turbo" or "advanced" moniker.

Not to forget the little sticker saying: "Now with 30% less fat!"

Re:Marketspeak

[Prod_Deity]

"Not to forget the little sticker saying: 'Now with 30% less fat!'" You mean a distro without Gnome or KDE?

Re:Marketspeak

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason for 10 (not X, like *someone else* :) has been documented. Look at it this way, at least it's not 2006 (even though it's 2005).

Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Adam Avangelist]

Can anyone explain to me this hype of meta-data searching. I for one do not understand the benefits of it one bit. When I saw the Microsoft demonstration video of WinFS it did not seem revolutionary or impressive. I don't understand why we would need beagle either. And if beagle every does take off will it run on other Linux distributions.

Personally I just store my files in My Documents folder and directory on Windows Xp and Linux respectfully; I have no need for a fancy search and when I do, find and Window's Find are adequate.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[crazyvas]

Not everyone might be as organized as you are. Many people like to throw their files all in one folder, and spend time figuring out what they want. Meta-data searching will hopefully reduce the time to retrive. The major problem with Windows Find is that results are not indexed and cached. An analogy would be a user typing a word into google, and google *initiating* a web crawl to go through thousands and thousans of servers to find the word. That is simply inefficient if you search frequently. A utility as simple as "locate" or "slocate" has solved this problem under Unix for ages. After installing Google deskstop, I have used it several times, though I should add that I've used it much less than I thought I would.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Skiron]

I have never understood why you need a DB type meta search on your own computer either.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[LWATCDR]

Google search and I think Spotlight do more than just search your files. They also search you email as well as many other types of data.
You can also extend the search so it can look in other data files.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[johnnyb]

I haven't used beagle, but here's the general case for large-scale meta-data searching:

If I'm looking for information on, say, the E-Zuper project I working on at work. This allows me to turn up everything that refers to it, whether its an email, a document, a bookmark -- anything. And note that two of those things only exist within certain applications -- the email and the bookmark aren't physical files. They are conceptual objects.

Likewise, you could say, "look at everything I did yesterday", and turn up emails, website visits, documents, etc.

Or you could say, "show me everything by Stan Sterner" and the same thing would happen.

For those of us whose data repositories are diverse and not always file-based, it would be a great blessing. Not to mention that meta-searching is useful even just with normal documents.

If you can assign arbitrary meta attributes, you can bypass the limitations of a traditional directory structure. For example, I can search and find documents that I'm supposed to have completed by tomorrow, if I include an attribute such as "date-needed" on those files. This will pull from every folder (which are likely arranged by project, not date). I could also add priority tags, and search by priority.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[really?]

I'm with you on this. But, it works for you and me because we have a clue - 1/4 clue in my case - AND make an effort of staying organized.
Joe Sixpack on the other hand, generally speaking, has no clue as what goes where; for example, he saves things wherever the file selection box points him to. If ALL programs made the SAME assumptions it would not be so bad, but that's not the case.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Nos.]

Think of it as a sort of front end to grep and find (for the *nix folks). I regularaly use both these tools as do a lot of other people.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[JoeNiner]

Do you use Gmail? The gist of it is, why manage and sort your email when you can just search it, and fast? Wouldn't it be nice to just put all of your files in a "MyStuff" directory and not have to worry about making it easy to locate later?

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF, don't these savages have grep?

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[mobilebuddha]

because i don't want to spend time organizing my files. i bought a $2000 machine so i can work on my presentations, emails.

letting computer do what it does best (parsing information, organizing information based on metadata) is the direction that we are going, whether you like it or not.

For one thing, you can always just not use the feature.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[MarkGriz]

Likewise, you could say, "look at everything I did yesterday", and turn up emails, website visits, documents, etc.

How about an example Slashdotters can relate to...

"Delete all website history and cache between 10:30 and 11:30 pm last night"

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[jaavaaguru]

i bought a $2000 machine

A $600 Mac could do that at the same speed as a 2GHz Pentium.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Queer Boy]

Can anyone explain to me this hype of meta-data searching. I for one do not understand the benefits of it one bit.

It depends on how it is implemented. Be OS used to save indexes of searches so that it was almost instantaneous to perform successive searches based on the same criteria. That's great for searching but that's not all that interesting and it still means you have to actually do the searching.

Take for instance Apple's Spotlight. It contains a feature called Smart Folders (which I personally cannot wait for, it's driving me batty). Maybe you want access to all your image files in one folder. Without having to keep track of all image files on your disk, and without having to duplicate them, you can do it. Maybe you want to have a folder of all your CSS files relating to a specific site without having to traverse file folders.

This, to me, is the most compelling reason at the moment to use this technology.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Jesus_666]

It's even better if you have a collection of things.
For example, a collection of MP3s could be sorted by putting them into a few big folders and symlinking them to other folders with names like "Jazz", "Sad stuff", "Press Play On Tape" or "1950 - 1955". However, that method requires you to make sure that every file has its appropriate links, wade through all files if you decide to add a category etc.
Migrating an existing collection of songs to such a setup would be a lot of work, too.

Now imagine that you just take a file, slap the digital equivalent of a Post-It note with the word "Chill" scrwaled onto it onto it and put it somewhere. Later, when you're in the mood for some Chill music, you just search for everything that matches "Chill" - and poof, the file pops up. Without you having to go through folders, deciding whether or not each file suits your current mood. You need some Blues songs without lyrics? If you have assigned the right metadata to your songs you just search for "Blues" and "no lyrics" and get all relevant files.

I think that metadata-based searching could be great for maintaining collections of files.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Anonymous Coward]

Which mac is that, the one with the 2.5" laptop drive? Yeah thats a speed monster when it comes to indexing and searching.

I just noticed the iMac is small enuogh to fit in the ass. Not even my $2000 pentium can go in there. The iMac is obviously a much better machine.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[dbaigrie]

Beagle works by registering meta information in the extended attributes of filesystems. The beagle daemon searches all of your files and indexes their content. Applications can send "clue packets" to the beagle daemon using DBus. These "clue packets" allow beagle to better index the items being created/used/viewed in real time as well as allowing for some better relationships between items to be created.

The idea is to be able to find things that are relevant to you.

Current applications (that I know of) that integrate with beagle are Gaim, Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox/Epiphany and Liferea.

Its searches really do return good results from everything that it integrates with. For instance if I search for something it may return web sites, news feed, IM chats as well as files on my hard disk.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Anonymous Coward]

Go here and run the Beagle demos.

If you still don't get it...well...there are people who don't think tabs in web browsers are a good idea either. Not that I spend much time attempting to understand them... :/

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just bang everything in one directory and write a simple shell script to create symlinks based on tags. So your music would all be in /var/share/files/music and your chilled accoustic blues track "J.Rohnson-Me_and_the_BSD_daemon_blues.ogg" would be symlinked to the following directories /var/share/meta/blues/, /var/share/meta/accoustic/, /var/share/meta/chill/, /var/share/meta/$tag/ etc...

That's a full evenings work right there! It'll be really great and revolutionize the way I search my filesystem... NOT :-o

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[timeOday]

If I'm looking for information on, say, the E-Zuper project I working on at work. This allows me to turn up everything that refers to it, whether its an email, a document, a bookmark -- anything.

If XML ever takes over, we'll all be back to storing data as text, and all you need is "grep" :) Ok, and "find."

If you can assign arbitrary meta attributes, you can bypass the limitations of a traditional directory structure. For example, I can search and find documents that I'm supposed to have completed by tomorrow, if I include an attribute such as "date-needed" on those files.

In theory, yes. But since nobody will ever do that, it's not much of a feature. In fact, you can use good old "ln" to create multiple different views of sets of files reflecting different information. But nobody ever does.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[phrasebook]

An analogy would be a user typing a word into google, and google *initiating* a web crawl to go through thousands and thousans of servers to find the word.

Most people's computers are fairly empty or just contain a lot of one type of file e.g. .doc's. Searching them fully each time is hardly a time consuming operation. Windows has an indexing service by the way, so it doesn't have to be totally fresh each time. The only people I've seen getting excited about this is nerds with blogs i.e. no typical users.

That is simply inefficient if you search frequently.

Strange. I would say what's inefficient is having to search frequently. This notion of dump & search (e.g. Google mail) seems highly inefficient. You don't throw all your clothes into a basket and have a robot search out what you're going to wear. You just do some simple ordering, anyone's brain can do it. The fact that many people don't do this ordering on their computers would have more to do with not knowing how, rather than not wanting to. To this day my mother has difficulty understanding drives mapped to letters and how to navigate folders and so on. Why not make it easier for them to do that, instead of now imposing extra searching, grouping by searches, vfolders and whatever else comes of this. Argh, what a mess. Yet another thing to turn off in some (probably hidden) 'Advanced settings' dialog.

IMHO it doesn't seem to match how people think or even how most people's computers end up.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[johnnyb]

"In theory, yes. But since nobody will ever do that, it's not much of a feature."

We would sure use that, here.

"In fact, you can use good old "ln" to create multiple different views of sets of files reflecting different information."

Except that using "ln" is arduous, and would probably not allow you to do complex querying.

"But nobody ever does."

Because you only get a subset of the features for a WHOLE LOT MORE work. How many office workers do you know that would even understand the concept of "ln"?

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Anonymous Coward]

because i don't want to spend time organizing my files

And this is why you should not have a computer. You need an internet appliance with an $80 monthly subscription to MSWebWare(tm) 1.0.

When your drive crashes, and it will, your screwed.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[discogravy]

Mac OS X Tiger will also have a meta-data search feature ("spotlight"), which as demonstrated by Jobs during the keynote, impressed the hell out of me. Really, all the meta-data stuff that most OSes are putting in now reminds me of BeOS (although I personally ran BeOS for all of two hours, this was one of the things that I really liked about it. It's lack of support for color w/ my particularly crappy and old vidcard and monitor is what made me switch back to windows and linux.) In a way, it shows off how forward-thinking the BeOS folks were, but it looks like the meta-data searching of files has improved and is catching on. Being able to put things in multiple categories has come in quite handy with my gmail account and being able to do something similar on my local machine seems really handy to me. Maybe you've never received an email or document that can be filed under more than one heading or category, but I know I have a bunch of stuff that I could better organize on my local machine if I could do something like that.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Madmonky1]

Searching is easier, and with indexing, it isn't very time consuming either. Our brains don't find data by travelling through folder hierarchies, they just request a peice of information, and if that data isn't found the first time, try again.

No method of organization will allow you to find information as quickly as requesting it. How often do you use google directory? How often do you use Google search? And what's quicker, typing the name of a program into a console, or finding it in the start menu? If you can request a file by describing it in any way (date, type, name, or anything else), it will be quicker to find it. Having to search everytime you need to access a file isn't so bad either, it's a lot easier to remember a search term than to remember what folder+filename you saved that last word document into.

Computers may not be able to do all of this yet, but they're fast enough that we can have much better searching tools than we have now.

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[T-Ranger]

Talking about slashdotters, it would be more like "10:30 and 10:32"

Re:Beagle, Winfs, Spotlight??

[Ecio]

Check these demos http://nat.org/demos/

Does anyone else see the irony

[Timesprout]

Trying to make feature out of paying less to your direct competitor last year.

Re:Does anyone else see the irony

[Spodlink05]

Trying to make feature out of paying less to your direct competitor last year.

I suspect this happens a lot. Many moons ago I worked for Sun Microsystems and one of their higher spec machines relied on IBM processor(s). So they were dependent on their arch rival to ship competing products on time and in working order.

SUSE 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a successor to SUSE 9.3?

Re:SUSE 10?

[CoolSilver]

This is pretty much SuSE 10. They never released a 9.3 Just a 9.2 I hate to see the SuSE name be lost. I would think they would still put out SuSE Personal. SuSE Pro is now Novel Desktop. SuSE was great before, now I think they are moving in a great direction. Novell needed something to compete with. This is Novell's saving point.

Re:SUSE 10?

[ip_fired]

SUSE 9.3 is almost ready. In fact, you can preorder it.

The SUSE name isn't dead, it's still around. NLD is a gnome based distribution based on SUSE with commercial fonts, and a tweaked office suite.

Re:SUSE 10?

[Jesus_666]

This is pretty much SuSE 10. They never released a 9.3 Just a 9.2

You're right, they never did. They are about to. I have a flyer from the CeBIT where you can preorder it - so I guess that either there will be a version 9.3 or Novell likes to say "sorry guys, but we decided to drop 9.3 in favor of another product".

Changed their mind.

[FreeLinux]

that it plans to compete directly with Windows.

The funny thing about this was that in the past and at last year's Brainshare, Novell had stated that they had no intention of competing directly against Windows. They even insinuated that attempting such competition was madness.

By the way. Joe Barr reported yesterday that SuSE 9.3 Professional will also include Beagle. Not that you can't download Beagle anyway.

Re:Changed their mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh noes! people kept saying Linux wasn't ready to compete with Windows so Novell said they won't compete with Windows, now we get some people saying Linux is ready for corporate workstations so Novell is all "full speed ahead"! Those stupid flip-floppers, they should just go on not being ready to compete with Windows!

Re:Changed their mind.

[slackadmin]

I think I downloaded Beagle once...it was sooooo packed w/ features it brought my XP box down...oh wait that was W32.Beagle@mm...my bad

Re:Changed their mind.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

The funny thing about this was that in the past and at last year's Brainshare, Novell had stated that they had no intention of competing directly against Windows. They even insinuated that attempting such competition was madness.

That was probably Messman talking sensibly before. Now, as you can see:

Currently, Linux on the desktop has been adopted primarily by technology groups and the public sector. "The next release of [Novell] Linux Desktop will be ready to compete with Windows," Friedman said.

...this time it's Nat Friedman, a person not exactly known for being tactful. Witness how he single-handedly alienated half a dozen well-established projects last month when he declared Hula to be a category-killer and that there was nothing else in that space. (The developers of Horde, eGroupware, Citadel, and a few other projects just kind of stared gapjawed at their screens, wondering whether the entire previous decade had been mere figments of their imaginations.) This is essentially the same thing: the Ximian people (Nat and Miguel) have a habit of alienating people. It may very well be that they are among the few who did not learn from the lesson of Mark Andreesen: don't moon the giant. The giant will become cross and will squash you like a bug.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Friedman found himself in Jack Messman's office getting verbally bitch-slapped for making that comment in public.

Re:Changed their mind.

[chiph]

Novellians attending Brainshare are primarily from the marketing dept. And since when have you known a marketeer to say the sensible thing?

Chip H.

Beagle an Odd Name?

[Daredevil73]

Any one else think naming your premium feature the same as the worst virus for Windows perhaps not a great marketing move?

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a *great* name.

What's wrong with reminding people how much time and money they've lost due to Microsoft's failures?

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[pg110404]

Is the windows virus beagle (the dog) or bagel (as in that hard bready like donut?)

BTW, seeing as beagle is this new search engine, could it be like novell trying to give a name to the concept of that stupid dog in XP search?

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[dlZ]

Not sure what it will officially go down in history as, but when it was first out there, it came up different depending on the virus scanner.

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and don't forget the crashed Mars probe.

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[mrchaotica]

Novell isn't the one who named it, you know...

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[toolshed7]

Maybe they should name it blue tick. That is a better hunting dog anyhow.

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[r_jensen11]

Since I am one of the few people (apparently)that opened the virus on Linux (Gotta love vi), the media funked up big time. The virus creates Windows Registry entries under Beagle, not bagel

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[MrResistor]

But that seems like a stupid name for a search utility to people like me who don't know anything about hunting dogs. I mean, what does a blood sucking insect have to do with finding stuff?

Most people at least know what a beagle is, and can make the connection well enough to remember the name. (I almost said everyone, but I spent way too long trying to explain my "Citizens for a Poodle Free Montana" t-shirt to a chinese guy the other day).

Re:Beagle an Odd Name?

[toolshed7]

That is true. Everyone knew what google mean when it came out. Google means search and not some large number. Thanks for pointing that out. With my small Andy Griffith size brain sometimes posting is hard.

Ouch!

[Danuvius]

One of the biggest things about NLD 10 is that it will have the desktop search engine Beagle as a feature.

Microsoft does not stand a chance!!

Re:Ouch!

[Jesus_666]

Microsoft does not stand a chance!!

Netcraft confirms it.

Re:Ouch!

[Sigl]

Microsoft does not stand a chance!!

They're not scared, they've had Fast Find for years.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[jav1231]

Yeah, like they know to go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Office\Word\ now and find winword.exe? Why don't they just go find it in the menu like they do with Windows? Oh, because your whole point would be moot.

Should have a pole...

[FinchWorld]

...with the following options:

1) Microsoft will deny it exists, because it can't possibly exist

2) Have a survey done by some 90% owned independant group that find it to be lacking in all aspects when compared to windows

3) Buy them out.

4) Use underhanded tactics to remove it.

5) All of the above (So how do 3 and 4 both happen you say?)

6) Would you prefere a In SOVIET or Does it run on.. instead.

Re:Should have a pole...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Should have a pole... "

My pole does not have all of these options but I don't mind because it performs its main tasks very well.

Novell is doing great work with Evolution...

[tcopeland]

...the lists are active (and questions actually get answered authoritatively), the IRC channel is lively, and the development is in the open. They've even got the logs of the team meetings on line.

PLUG: I'm working on a Ruby wrapper for Evolution. Good times!

Re:Novell is doing great work with Evolution...

[Anonymous Coward]

That somehow makes it a greater pity that evolution is a smouldering pile of excrement.

Re:Novell is doing great work with Evolution...

[killjoe]

When do I get the windows version!. I am not allowed to use linux at work and I HATE outlook with a passion.

Re:Novell is doing great work with Evolution...

[tcopeland]

Whew, I dunno... I don't know if anyone's looked at porting it to Win32 yet. Might want to ask on the lists...

Re:Novell is doing great work with Evolution...

[jojo1835]

No windoze version. Novell and Nat (check out his blog at http://www.nat.org/ have rumored that a port was in the works. Problem is that Evolution is based on native linux libraries. You can't really do a port, you just gotta start all over.

If you're going to do that, you might as well just go web based. I know there are some limitations, but it's still easier than building a new client.

Tim

Re:Novell is doing great work with Evolution...

[shutdown -p now]

Yet Evolution still crashes more often than Outlook, especially on large mailing lists.

While it may seem crass

[KingBahamut]

its about time that someone made such a claim. Of course will Novell be successful? Whos to say. They may they may not.

I will say that Suse is a nice build of OS, and if they can properly provide a range of products, both server and workstation, then it might be as successful as RH.

Re:While it may seem crass

[whizzter]

I'm usually a sceptic when it comes to opensource on the desktop (afaik there is still a bug pending in the Xorg server that prevents it from using truecolor modes on my laptop that i reported a YEAR AGO! Xfree86 does has a fix tho).

on the bright side:
1: Microsoft said that they've beaten Novell before, but on the other hand Novell is hopefully now a far more competent competitor
2: Even tho they do sponsor a lot of opensource projects they are getting far more in return, thus they should be able to have the same amount of software bundled in the platform as Microsoft has for windows, and hopefully even cheaper! The opensource stack is actually quite powerful today with some sadly notable exceptions.
3: All the complaints about security problems are actually making people turn away nowadays, previous competitors didn't have this advantage.
4: People spend far more time on the web nowadays, and with firefox gaining popularity changing over should feel less frightening.
5: Novell isn't alone in the game, together with IBM,Sun,RH,etc they should be able to cover most ground when it comes to the interoperability game played by MS.

on the other hand...
1: A few years ago there was a huge backslash after Corel linux, "Prominent" companies announced ports of prominent software but alot went down the drain. (see mark ranums comments)
2: Brand recognition. Novell doesn't say much to john doe, i think that even Sun might be ahead when pushing their offering as "Java Desktop". you notice mentions of Java around most modern cellphones, this kinda gives them an unconcious brand recognition.
3: Market segmentation and interoperability between linux and linux (see ranum again).
4: Shaky brand. my only experience with Novell products was in 7th-12th grade(94-00) when the schools/city i grew up in was using it. what i remember was some obscure system that had invalidated an old password of a teacher of mine, i think we used the account to send some prank emails :)
5: WHY should people switch, ipod is a good reason for using macs apperantly but what does novell have to show for itself?
6: Microsoft...

/ Jonas Lund

Re:A Bad Idea.

[radarsat1]

that's why newbies should use a good desktop, like gnome or kde, where there's a little thing called a "menu".

Seriously, I've found that *most* (but not all) application packages in debian tend to install decent menu items.

However, I will admit that this isn't always the case. Sometimes after installing a package you do have to guess a bit at how to run it or what to look for though. (Especially if it's something you're just trying but maybe don't know much about.) It's more a question of easily accessible documentation. (Ie., users won't want to use "man". And besides, you need to know the command name before you can put "man" in front of it.)

But my point was that most of the time, I run synaptic, install a package, then hit the gnome Applications menu and find it right away. What's so hard about that?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Uptown Joe]

I don't agree. I'm a Sys Admin, but I only use Windows and some Netware. I have almost no experience on Linux. The NLD was east to install, It was loaded with apps and it found all my hardware. You also have a choice of Gnome or KDE (I prefer the Gnome)during the install.

The included Citrix Client just worked out of the box.

I can see NLD being a real challenger for Uncle Bill.

There is an eval of 9 on the Novell site, try it out.

So,

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not read the article,
but if Microsoft says it switch to Microsoft products and saves money, will it be news?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[SA Stevens]

I've witnessed control-freaks of dubious intelligence 'delete all that extra crap' on the hard drive to 'get more space.'

It's fun to watch them spin their wheels and sputter when they're done totally futzing up their computer.

Dr Mendele agrees with you

[Anonymous Coward]

have a fun time in hell with him Anita

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[Anita Coney]

Hell, is your creation, not mine.

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[dhakbar]

Commas are your weak point, not mine.

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[Anita Coney]

Wow, you're right. I sure hope there's not a comma hell!

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[jaavaaguru]

Re: your sig

It would be called "My Butt Wiper"

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[Anita Coney]

No, "My Butt Wiper" would be the name on the icon linked to where we'd store our used toilet paper.

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[jaavaaguru]

We store it? What't wrong with just deleting it? I wouldn't have used it if i didn't want to permanently throw it away.

Re:Dr Mendele agrees with you

[Anita Coney]

It's all a part of Microsoft's grand plan.

Wow, it's going to have Beagle!

[glrotate]

I guess no more argument as to which distro is best.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Blob Pet]

except that a regular user isn't going to have permission to move oowriter. It's perfectly acceptable, though, if the user decides to make a link in ~/programs/oowriter/oowriter.

So true.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care who you are, that's fucking funny.

It's true too.

Larry.
The insensitive cable guy.

Best of Luck to 'em

[LABob]

They've got a bone to pick with MS. Remember how NT crushed Netware back in the mid to late 90's. Seems Novell wants another hurtin'

Let's all hope they do a little better this time around... for hope is eternal ;)

Re:Best of Luck to 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

I was there.

Microsoft crushed Novell because Netware requires license key disks to use anything beyond two simultaneous connections to the server. Microsoft, having no server market share but tons of revenue from their MSDOS monopoly, allowed self-certification of license information.

You would not believe how many places went to NT server from Netware because NT Server "cost less than a tenth of what Netware cost" because companies did not take piracy seriously. Microsoft pretended not to care.

Once Microsoft got their market share up through piracy, they started to crack down through the Business Software Alliance. I remember when BSA ran a full-page ad in the Baltimore Sun encouraging disgruntled employees to inform on their employers.

Novell did shoot themselves in the foot by requiring Win32 to run the NDS Administration application. It soured me so badly on them that I let my MCNE lapse and never looked back.

love NLD9

[linuxbeta]

I love Novell Linux Desktop 9

osdir screenshots

Re:love NLD9

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! That looks just like.... KDE.

Re:love NLD9

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but what the fuck is with the Novell/Suse webpage? It's total shit!

Re:A Bad Idea.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yeah, I've seen that happen. I use OS X by preference for most tasks, and I think they strike a good middle ground. They put most native programs in /Applications. In a shared environment users can install programs to ~/Applications. The BSD subsystem applications are stored in /usr/bin and the other historically expected locations. Newbies look in /Applications and find everything. CLI gurus find everything where they expect too.

Watching a Mac user run Windows or Linux is painful. They try to move or delete programs and just can't understand why it doesn't work.

If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[jht]

Novell has the resources and expertise to make Linux a truly viable desktop OS for Joe Corporate User. That all said, I'm not sure they will be able to out-market Microsoft enough to make a dent - even with their new management that's come in over the last couple of years, Novell remains the prototypical company that would open up a sushi bar, and advertise it with a sign saying:

"Cold Raw Dead Fish for Sale!"

(and I'm a Novell Partner- i like Novell!)

I've seen their new Open Enterprise Server (the SuSE/NetWare fusion) and it's tremendously impressive - I spent time in a class on it last week. The current NLD (based on SuSE 9.0) is a good solid desktop, which I run on one of my Dell boxes. Somebody out there is going to make Linux into a truly viable desktop player, and it'll probably be Novell in spite of their poor marketing skills.

I just hope that NLD doesn't turn out to be the "only" shot at a widespread penetration of the corporate desktop for Linux in general. Linux is doing just fine on the back end, but on the desktop right now the only real "alternative" is Apple - we need a good Linux-based Third Option to really start nibbling away at Windows.

I'll trade you...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll trade you my 100 shares of SCOX.

Re:I'll trade you...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll trade all of my shares of IMSI and pitch $7

Re:I'll trade you...

[Inzkeeper]

Speaking of 302: Sorry, no such thing.
You need to redirect to SCOXE.
That is E for "in the process of being Evicted from the exchange".
You'd better look quick. It may be gone by the time you get there.

Re:I'll trade you...

[Anonymous Coward]

sweetend the deal with some BEOS and you might get some nibbles.

Yeah, I am rushing....

[jotaeleemeese]

....to cut and paste that into my newly opened window browser.

Lazy cunt!

Re:Yeah, I am rushing....

[bonkeroo buzzeye]

He couldn't be bothered to link it; you couldn't be bothered to paste it. You're even. Apathy, apathy, everywhere and not a Jolt to drink. ;)

comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[pyros]

It will be interesting to see what obstacles Novell encounters compared to IBM. The last thing I heard about IBM's transistion was that they are rewriting all their internal web applications to no longer require Internet Explorer.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[DogDude]

You've obviously never worked at a large company (especially IBM). To say that ANYTHING happens company-wide is a joke. That being said, one of my very good friends works at IBM writing web applications, and doesn't even use Firefox, never mind designs for it. Everything is IE only.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[Kur]

Novell spoke/presented about this topic last year. I'm sure they have a whitepaper or story on their website.

From what I remember from the presentation, they began by forcing everyone onto Openoffice. At the same time, their internal IT department began running Linux and evaluating what software would need to ported, purchased, or replaced with FOSS. For those applications like Siebel, they ended up site licensing Codeweavers crossover and worked with Codeweavers to fix bugs that arose. They also began going to their own development teams and got them to add Linux support (Groupwise, for example).

This year, they have not provided a detailed update but that may have been in a Brainshare session I missed.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[pyros]

You've obviously never worked at a large company

Is Halliburton big enough? Lots of IT stuff happens company-wide.

Everything is IE only.

that's kinda what I said, why else would they have to rewrite them to not be IE only if they weren't IE only in the first place? And the existence of you friend hardly negates the press on IBM's migration.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[DogDude]

Well, Haliburton is better run, or at least has better communication. Even as we speak, he's hard at work on some IE-only code. He's never heard of, nor has anyone in his department, ever heard this decree, if it really did happen. Same thing with their supposed Linux migration. Never happened. It was just for the press.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[DogDude]

Oh yeah, and I did work for IBM on 3 different occasions (twice as a programmer, once as a support dork). Never heard of such a thing.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes they work with CodeWeavers extensively and have got Crossover deployed on many desktops - they're learning a lot about Windows appcompat doing this transition and that'll stand them in good stead for future migration consulting.

Re:comparing Novell transition to IBM's

[Anonymous Coward]

The decree did happen, just not particularly strongly. Mozilla and IE are the two browsers officially supported by IBM for internal use, and Firefox has just recently appeared on the IBM-wide Intranet portal that supplies users with the 'official' standard PC application set.

However, the transition of internal apps from IE-only to IE-and-Mozilla compliance happens faster in some areas than others. This isn't helped by the fact that some internal tools are actually authored by external consultancies and not by IBM at all (go figure!) and these external consultancies are not bound to write apps for anything other than IE.

IBM internal web app developer guidelines clearly state Mozilla support is a requirement - all IBM developers of such internal apps should be aware of this.

The IBM internal Linux newsgroups frequently protest about the lack of Mozilla support for IE-only apps, and there is a small taskforce of motivated people who politely contact the application authors and point out that Mozilla support should be included - this has made a difference in quite a few cases.

Search Dog

[Inkieminstrel]

Great, another annoying dog asking me what I want to search for.

Re:Search Dog

[pg110404]

MS should have turned that stupid dog into some kind of tamagochi where you have to feed it, clean up after it, etc, and if you neglect it a little, it screws up your searches and if you neglect it too much for too long, it dies and doesn't bother you again when you do a search.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use debian:

1) start mc
2) go to /var/cache/apt/archives
3) enter the package you just installed and see what kind of executables, manpages, etc... are there.

It can be easier in the CLI

[AtariAmarok]

"that's why newbies should use a good desktop, like gnome or kde, where there's a little thing called a "menu"."

Often, these things are still easier in the GUI. Is "oowrite" always in that /usr/bin whatever folder mentioned in the parent? Then you can go to the CLI and start it in the time it takes you to fish around and search all over the screen for menus and icons that are might not even be in the same place from bootup to bootup, and will certainly never been in the same place from different machine to different machine.

"But my point was that most of the time, I run synaptic, install a package, then hit the gnome Applications menu and find it right away."

What if you have 60 or so applications? Or synaptic is in a sub menu? You'll have a lot of squinting and hunting to do. Chances are, the CLI user will have started synaptic and will be deep into use of it while you are still hunting for the name of it in the GUI. And when you install more apps, likely synaptic will move to another place in the menu list if it is alphabetized.

There is a lot of improvement to be made to the GUI. Nothing, not even Mac OS X has approached the ease of use of an ancient DOS menu utility I last saw 12 years ago. It came on right after bootup, and you pressed an alphabetic letter to start an app. Sure, the environment left something to be desired in other ways, but the ease of use in launching was unmatched, especially compared to cluttered and wildly inconsistent GUI desktops.

Re:It can be easier in the CLI

[Jesus_666]

Take your preferred apps. Put them into a separate menu. Put that menu directly onto your Kicker/whatever the Google taskbar is called. Bing! you have just made all the GUI programs you use on a regular basis easily accessible.
Other programs will take a bit longer to find, but as they usually are in some sensible place (ie the GIMP is under "Graphics", not "System Tools") and the menus are usually alphabetized, it's not hard to find a particular app.

Sure, the CLI ist faster. Just type in the name of the app and off you go (if it's in your $PATH, of course). But sometimes it's just nice to move your mouse to the bottom of the screen, click and watch Thunderbird load.

Re:It can be easier in the CLI

[radarsat1]

i don't disagree at all. i'm usually launching terminals all over the place to just run other apps, even to type "ooffice" for a file on my desktop.. I, like you, prefer grep and find to nautilus file browser.

But the point is that we're talking about "newbies" here, not me and you, and really when it comes down to it, it's NOT that hard to find your apps. Especially considering "newbies" will _not_ have 60 or so apps in their menus.

Besides, even if it was, you couldn't claim it's any harder than the competition.

Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[jotaeleemeese]

Up to date, latest and greatest ones.

I don't care if they are bnaries, the important think would be that any Linux user could get hold of one.

With Novell, RH, Sun and IBM pushing for commercial Linux desktops we may get this more often thatn we currently do now.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[Anonymous Coward]

and this very short-sighted attitude of "just make it work" so we can convince the insignificantly small community of potential Linux users who blanch at the thought of their bizare HW not working is what the rest of the open source community doesn't appreciate. HW specs and interfaces need to be open so anybody can write a driver be it OpenBSD, Linux, or whomever.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[zsau]

I don't care if they are bnaries, the important think would be that any Linux user could get hold of one.

But I do. Think about it: If you need to use binary drivers to run Linux, why wouldn't you just use Windows?

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[labratuk]

I don't care if they are bnaries, the important think would be that any Linux user could get hold of one.

Unless they're running on something 'unsupported' like ppc or sparc. Or are running an 'unsupported' version of gcc or glibc. Or are trying to run the hardware three years after the vendor last bothered updating the driver so that it won't work on a modern kernel.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Unless they're running on something 'unsupported' like ppc or sparc. Or are running an 'unsupported' version of gcc or glibc. Or are trying to run the hardware three years after the vendor last bothered updating the driver so that it won't work on a modern kernel."

Perhaps if Linux had a standardized and consistent ABI this wouldn't be a problem

There are tens of thousands of binary-only drivers for Windows. It's been 5 years since Windows 2000 was released and those drivers still work great on Windows XP SP2.

I wish I could say the same about Linux modules. It's stupid that I have to recompile my modules when I go from 2.6.10-4 to 2.6.10-5.

Not every computer has GCC, automake, and the kernel headers installed & configured. If Linux wants to be seriously accepted as a desktop OS, the kernel *needs* an ABI that allows modules to be run on *any* kernel (on the same platform) without recompiling. It's OK to break support for a major release (2.4 -> 2.6), but there should be *no reason* why binary modules stop working when you install a minor kernel upgrade.

It particularly sucks on systems like my Ubuntu laptop. I need a special module to make wifi work, and I have to recompile it *every time* there is a minor update to the kernel.

Oh, yeah, and not having binary compatibility makes it harder for distro maintainers to keep up-to-date with kernel releases.

Windows, Mac OS, and other operating systems have had binary driver compatibility for *years*. It's time for Linus to stop trying to enforce his worldview and accept the reality that Linux isn't a toy OS anymore. It's a serious platform with serious vendor support, and it's time for the kernel ABI to reflect that.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[farnz]

So, why doesn't the Windows 2000 driver for my SCSI card work on Windows XP RTM, SP1, or SP2? Why doesn't the Windows 2000 driver for the scanner itself work on any version of XP (tested by switching to an Adaptec card)? Why do the scanner manufacturer, the card manufacturer and Microsoft all tell me to get a new scanner, as the old drivers are incompatible?

The answer is that the driver writers used an API that didn't support power management properly, but which flags the driver as supporting power management. Thus, the driver causes Windows to crash hard as soon as it tries to do anything with power management. Given the choice between an unstable ABI, which breaks drivers like that completely (do not load at all), and a stable ABI that results in unpredictable failures of the system (BSOD whenever Windows XP does something unexpected), I'll take the unstable ABI.

Re:Novell may get us something we need: drivers.

[labratuk]

There are many reasons why binary kernel modules are a bad idea entirely. You try debugging a kernel that's had a module insterted into it that you don't have the source for.

Reasons for desktop search:

[mrchaotica]

• I want my documents to be in two places at once (without messing with symlinks)
• I want my documents to automatically organize themselves using metadata
• I want my OS to tell me about information related to whatever I'm doing now

Re:Reasons for desktop search:

[sharkey]

I want my OS to tell me about information related to whatever I'm doing now

It looks like you're browsing pr0n! Would you like:

• Me to offer suggestions on sites?
• Me to tell you if you have images/videos already downloaded?
• Me to have some Astroglide FedEx'd overnight?

Re:Reasons for desktop search:

[mrchaotica]

Well, no, not like that. More like "here's a list of all the other pr0n you've been looking at recently."

Re:Reasons for desktop search:

[rhennigan]

want my documents to automatically organize themselves using metadata

iTunes is a fine example of files being organized by meta-data. I use my mac to rip all my cds and import music through iTunes then just share the iTunes music folder as a samba share to access with other systems. Having directories all organized by artist and album really makes it easy to find something to play in XMMS.

Re:Reasons for desktop search:

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, I agree. I didn't understand what was so great about metadata either, until I started using iTunes.

Re:Reasons for desktop search:

[MrResistor]

OK, but where does that meta-data come from? There has to be some amount of human input into the process of generating it, both in determining what catagories exist and what catagories an individual file belongs to. Is there really that much gained over simply using an intelligent directory structure? And, more importanttly, does that gain still exist for the people who don't bother to think about organizing their data now?

Re:Reasons for desktop search:

[mrchaotica]

Some of the metadata comes from the input process itself (timestamps, for example). Other metadata comes from internet sources (source URLs, CDDB-like databases, and eventually maybe del.icio.us-style categories). Another kind of metadata could be generated from the files themselves (picking keywords out of text, maybe weighted by frequency, etc.).

At any rate, for me the coolest thing isn't so much searching as organizing. I use iTunes, and I love it because I can have my music organized in several different ways simultaneously -- I can have a "Beatles" playlist, a "60's" playlist, and a "5-star rating" playlist and "Eleanor Rigby" might be on all three, but with different combinations of songs, and I'd pick different playlists to listen to at different times. I'm really looking forward to having this same ability with all my files, so that I can organize my code by project, and also be able to arrange it by programming language or by algorithm type or whatever.

You could even use it to organize your pr0n collection -- say you've got an "asian lesbian tentacle anime" picture. Which folder do you put it in, the "asian," "lesbian," "tentacle," "anime," or "pictures" folder? With desktop search (e.g., Tiger's "Smart Folders") it'll get sorted into all five folders. Get it?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could simply click on the right icon in your window manager, like you would do in Windows. And if you don't like the structure in the "start" menu of say, KDE, then you can drag it to the desktop as a shortcut.
Alternatively, you could go wild and use the commandline: type the first part of the program name in any console and press TAB for autocompletion (cause we're all lazy) and press enter.

Hey, I prefer the commandline for such petty tasks, but who am I to condemn user's old habits...

Great news for Lucene and Lucene.Net

[otisg]

This is great news for Lucene, which is what's at the core of Beagle. More specifically, it is the port of Lucene (Java) to C# and .Net, which can be found at http://www.dotlucene.net/.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Watching a mac user is painful too...

imagine seeing someone click on the firefox icon on the dock, and having the mac sit there for a few seconds as it first mounts the disk image(which is likely placed randomly on the hard drive) with firefox in it, and then starts it.

Funny

[numbski]

One of these times, I want to get slashdotted, then turn around and 302 redirect back to slashdot. ;)

But only for slashdot referrers.

Re:Funny

[Doc Ruby]

That is my favorite "hall of mirrors" DoS attack since the "Black Page" fax attack.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Steven Edwards]

hmm well Windows has had this idea called shortcuts for about 10 years and the file format of the *.lnk structure has hardly changed in all that time. As compared with *.desktop, xdg-menus, shell scripts for shotcuts, etc. With linux its no wonder users get confused. Under Windows it does not matter much where it gets installed as in 99% of the cases it just works from the start menu. Compare that to 50% of the time installing a app on Suse vs Fedora vs Debian. I know I support a Linux application that has to deal with this menu crap.

an oldie...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's linux 10?

Re:an oldie...

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "SuSE" not "Redhat".

My desktop search tool

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

since I'm using Linux/BSD/Mac, is called locate.

Yes, it's not integrated into the OS as Spotlight on the Mac will be, but it does a good job.

No fancy bloated technology for me.

Re:My desktop search tool

[Anonymous Coward]

No fancy bloated technology for me.

Well I use slocate - the horror!

Metadata searches are a solution looking for a problem, just look at how successful the semantic web has been and that would actually be useful.

Re:My desktop search tool

[andreyw]

Sure, it lets you find files. (so does find, but slower). What about looking inside files?

Re:My desktop search tool

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Who says you need one tool for everything?

The Unix philosophy doesn't and I like that. If you want to search through files, use grep.

I'm sure you could find ways to index file contents just like locate indexes a list of all files on disk (so it's just a text file after all). I'm not familiar with tools for that though. I think Apple's Spotlight does that under the hood.

Re:My desktop search tool

[andreyw]

*cough* (e)grep is for /text/ files. What about, say, searching within jpeg, png, mpeg or aac metadata?

Get in line

[ClosedSource]

"it plans to compete directly with Windows."

The line for products to compete with Windows forms in the back. Lotus Notes, Java, browser-based apps, and network computers are already in line. Desktop 10 will just have to wait its turn.

I don't see it

[FreeLinux]

The list is barely active. There only a couple of posts per day with most of the questions going unanswered.

The latest version of Evolution that ships with the latest version of Novell Linux, SuSE 9.2 Professional, is Evolution 2.0.1.

Evolution 2.0.1 is a buggy version that fails to upgrade older message stores more often than not.
Has a cappy interface compared to 1.x versions.
Missing features that were available in 1.x
New features do not work or are not complete.

I wish Miguel would drop the Mono mess and come back to Evolution. It has turned to crap!

Re:I don't see it

[tcopeland]

> The list is barely active

I was thinking of this one; almost a megabyte of messages each day.

> Evolution 2.0.1

Yup, and Fedora Core 3 shipped with 2.0.2. Hopefully FC4 will have something newer, because lots has changed.

> fails to upgrade older message stores

Hm, I don't deny your experience with 2.0.1, but 2.0.2 upgraded my 1.4 store just fine....

What's Beagle? URL here

[otisg]

Saving a few people a few Google visits:
Beagle

Also interesting:
Beagle CVS repo.

True Cost

[Quill_28]

I am not against moving away from MS.

But how much time($$) was spent moving to Linux?
Was any training needed to move to Linux?

There is alot more than just license fees.

Re:True Cost

[nharmon]

Except that the license fees are repetitive, so moving to Linux now saves money every year. Compare to one-time costs of rewriting some apps, training some old dogs (IMHO, few will really need formal ($$) training to run Linux at the level they run windows).

If you break even, like in 3 years, is it still worth it?

I think you just answered your own question.

Re:True Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shut up.

Re:True Cost

[James Wells]

Greetings,

Strangely, there is very little training needed to move the average user from Windows to Linux. The average user browses the web, writes a couple emails, and maybe does some word processing / spreadsheet work. All of these tools already exist and use the exact same key strokes as their Windows counterparts.

A little over 5 years ago, I migrated a couple of small companies (less than 50 employees each) from Windows to Linux. At the time, there were a lot fewer desktop applications available, but even then, there was very little training required. The only real training needed was for the software developers and system administrators. The software developers were used to the Borland and Microsoft IDE's while the system administrators were simply used to the way Microsoft did system administration.

Re:True Cost

[White Roses]

From an accounting point of view, though, the two costs you mention are one time, or minimally recurring costs, whereas license fees are ongoing. Not that Novell will save $900,000 every single year, but let's say a third of that every year. Funnel that money into some really good corporate trainers that you keep on staff. Or contract trainers for the transition period who also act as mentors/gurus. Or, if Novell already has trainers (which they probably do), pay them a little extra to get up to speed with Linux. In the long run, this may make sense. If more companies did it, we'd have more data to work with. Problem is, the companies that are doing it usually have a vested interest in Linux, so the data will likely be flawed, with costs hidden in other centers (like, uh, say, training).

On a side note, the last company I worked for was a training company trying to go all Linux on the corporate desktops (they train Linux and Windows based apps, so some Windows would always remain). The one remaining obstacle was getting OOo to print page numbers as chapter-page, where the page numbers restart every chapter, so they could replace Word. Never got a chance to look that one up. I'm sure they've figured it out by now (it's been almost a year) and have moved to Linux on most corporate desktops. Unless the CEO and President (who is a Mac user) decided those Mac Minis were a better way to go (he might have).

Re:True Cost

[Scott7477]

Switching office software should be far less painful to the average corporate desktop user than adapting to the ERP systems that many companies have implemented in the last fifteen years. Given that most users don't do anything with macros or any of the other more arcane features of Microsoft Office, once they see that they can open their files with the NLD they will be fine. Power users who have written a lot of macros should find the transition to be simple.

Re:True Cost

[handmedowns]

Respectively,

How much time ($$) is spent dealing with viruses and renewing ($$) your subscription to Norton, McAffee / whoever.

How much time is spent dealing with the difference between office 2000 & office 2003..(vs something like OO.org) and the bugs that follow unicode translations because of the closed document formats?

How much ($$) is spent in network engineers locking down every conceivable incoming port on the firewalls, setting up IDS with rules for 1001 worms that they wouldn't have to for *nix based systems. NOT including when a worm actually manages to get through and infect a box. or 20.

How much ($$) is lost anually in bandwidth from generated spam from windows zombied boxes?! NOT including time setup for filters, managing complaints from people replying to you because of forged domains, etc etc etc.

There's always going to be a learning curve and a cost associated with training whether you're going from MS to Linux or MS to MS. However, there's not necessarily always going to be a re-occuring licensing merry-go-round.

IMHO MS Windows is the worst thing to EVER happen to a networked computing environment and Corporate collabaration.

Re:True Cost

[sjs132]

I work at a school... I've said it over and over... Untill the teachers can select oss apps that come on the CD in the back of the book for teaching medical transcription/office stuff, then we HAVE to use the Windows based software that is usually on the CD... (therefore, windows)

The majority of the world uses Windows. Sad, but true... Yes, in a company you can convert to OpenOffice, firefox, etc... and have a linux desktop because you can TELL your employees use this or else... But in the REAL world, people get windows with their computer and keep it and never plan to change it, and instead invest more money by purchasing/stealing office, TurboTax, etc...

Untill the Linux Based computers are as commen in the stores at radioshack, sears, gateway, dell kiosks, etc... it will NOT make a headway into the desktop BECAUSE your SMALL BUISNESSES make up the majority of busineses running... and those types of mom/pop businesses keep what they get on their computers when they buy them from the closest box store (bestbuy, circuit city, compUSA, etc..) or on TV with their valuepayments...

So, untill these 2 items are solved: (a) ready availability of various software standard software available in linux flavor and (b) infusion of the market with cheap pc's with linux aimed at citizen x and mom/pop businesses. ... WINDOWS WILL RULE.

Personally, I like Linux and Netware... But I still use Windows on my mother's computer....

just my view... take it for what it's worth, not meant to start flame wars.

Re:True Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid mods pay attention.

This was one of the first posts. Redundant?

I AM THE GREATEST TROLL IN THE WORLD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Terri Schavio is HAWT!!!

I wish I could legally get a job at that nursing home, I'd change her sheets every day, if you know what I mean!

Re:I AM THE GREATEST TROLL IN THE WORLD!

[Anita Coney]

God, this is turning into a HILARIOUS thread! That was fucking awesome! I actually laughed out loud!

Re:I AM THE GREATEST TROLL IN THE WORLD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, I found the broccolli(sp?) better...

Novell rocks

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

and I just heard from a guy working for Blackberry that they're working on making the Blackberry Enterprise Server work on Novell Groupwise Linux boxes. Oh happy day, when I can dump Exchange :)
Thanks for talking the talk and walking the walk, Novell. IBM, when are you going to switch the corporate desktops?

Re:Novell rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

The company is called RIM. RIM makes the Blackberry.

Re:Novell rocks

[robpoe]

It's out and available now.

Dump Exchange. You have no excuse now :P

Re:Novell rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. GroupWise is absolutely brilliant, and I see absolutley no reason at all why anyone would ever use Exchange or Notes over it. I had the decicion of choosing a GroupWare solution for my company when we grew from 12 employees to over a 150 in the course of three months. I compared OpenGroupWare, GroupWise, Notes, and even Exchange. GroupWise beat them all in every way I could think of. I haven't looked back since.

Re:Novell rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for talking the talk and walking the walk, Novell. IBM, when are you going to switch the corporate desktops?

As soon as they finish rewriting their internal apps to be platform-independent, maybe?

Re:Novell rocks

[rsax]

Blackberry Enterprise Server does not currently run on Linux. Check out the system requirements. So technically I have an excuse... oh wait a minute, I don't run Exchange anyway. Happy happy joy joy.

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they really think this Beagle will land?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[kidgenius]

um...I am guessing you never have used linux, or if you had, it was for about 5 minutes. Linux has something called "symbolic links" which can function in a way much similar to what MS calls "shortcuts". and i imagine the ones in linux/unix have been aroudn longer. Also, most of the programs that install nowadays put themselves into your "start" menu in the major desktop distros.

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[jbellis]

"Novell has the resources and expertise to make Linux a truly viable desktop OS for Joe Corporate User."

Uh... what desktop OS expertise does Novell bring to the table that SuSE didn't already have? The last _desktop_ OS Novell produced was Novel DOS 7. (Or was it 8?)

Active Directory

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

The main issue for corporate for Linux to "compete" with Windows is user authentication over the network, all the permissions things that Active Directory offers. LDAP stuff.

Re:Active Directory

[siezer]

Acually, SLES9 ships with an LDAP server, and the regular Suse ftp distro/suse pro/ and I would assume NLD9/10 will authenticate against it by default, with TLS.

The other uses of Active Directory, such as software management, are fufilled by ZenWorks.

What *I* would love to see Novell do is some work on NFS4/kerb to complete the package.

One thing at a time!

-s

Re:Active Directory

[Anonymous Coward]

but seriously though most Microsoft shops won't use active directory cuz it blows. I'd like to see people claim using active directory is fun and easy. instead i hear people moan about how horrible it is.

Re:Active Directory

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Hmmm. See if you can locate some Air Force guys. Active Directory is the "cornerstone" of our entire system of authenticating users across our networks. Got to love it...

Re:Active Directory

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, especially as we are talking about Novel here, the company that practically invented all the stuff MS copied (rather badly compared to the original) with Active Directory.

Jesus, parent has to be one of the most unintelligent comments I read on /. for a long time and it's not that he isn't running against strong competition.

Re:Active Directory

[merchant_x]

Novell supported LDAP long before MS. Also Active Directory is just a very poor clone of Novell's superior NDS (Novell Directory Services)tech.

Re:Active Directory

[PenGun]

Got to love it... Thanks eh' ;).

Re:Active Directory

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. NDS has been around a lot longer than AD and is much more stable.

Re:Active Directory

[Salo2112]

Novell already has AD beaten with NDS. Try it. It runs natively on Netware, Linux and Windows. In a decade or so, AD might be where NDS is today.

Re:Active Directory

[cdcarter]

Novell eDirectory comes with Active Directory plugins...

Re:Active Directory

[lukehatpadl]

It's possible to support Active Directory clients using a Linux directory server, albeit not with NDS at this time. See XAD.

Re:Active Directory

[BunnyClaws]

We just recently started using Novell eDirectory in a test environment linking A.D. with our H.R. system and an in house Oracle application. So far I have not been that impressed with eDirectory. One problem is with the DirXML driver always stopping during an A.D. sync. So far Novell support has not provided much support. I think Novell may have some catching up to do with M.S. as far as customer support is concerned.

Re:Active Directory

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never called MS Tech support. Not with a real problem anyway.

Novell is selling the Linux solution

[winkydink]

Did you really expect them to say that it was more expensive? The TCO calculations can be strongly influenced in either direction by carefully choosing what to measure, and, more importantly, what not to measure.

Re:Novell is selling the Linux solution

[steve_vmwx]

You're right WD :)

For anyone else interested in yet another opinion...

The best way is to do your own TCO. Sure, read the arguments from both camps to make sure you've got a complete list of "factors". Also ensuring that they apply to your case.

But then use your *own* in-house numbers! :)

If you make a switch based on someone else's numbers and it was the wrong move... who do you blame?

Cheers
Stevo

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Steven Edwards]

I am guessing you have never developed a application that runs on more than one distro with gnome/kde/etc. Symlinks are great but what about icons for the user? How about tooltips on the icon?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

If its in the the /usr/bin directory you just enter the name of the program into a console to run it. For example to run oowriter you simply type oowriter into a console, you don't have to cd into the directory.

End Lusers

[swb]

Despite decades of the "desktop" and "folder" metaphor, most lusers are still too stupid (lazy, foolish, etc) to navigate their filesystems. Anything that doesn't show up in their last 4 opened documents in whatever applications they use might as well be lost.

Traditional file search isn't good enough since in addition to being too brain atrophied to navigate a file system, they also think that "Document 1" is a reasonable naming convention.

Re:End Lusers

[dmaxwell]

Traditional file search isn't good enough since in addition to being too brain atrophied to navigate a file system, they also think that "Document 1" is a reasonable naming convention.

If you can't be bothered to learn files and "folders" then I don't think a search tool that you aren't going to learn either will be much help.

Re:End Lusers

[MrResistor]

Traditional file search isn't good enough since in addition to being too brain atrophied to navigate a file system, they also think that "Document 1" is a reasonable naming convention.

So, where does the meta-data come from?

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

SuSe, which is aquired by Novell, is in version 9.x and this version 10 product is the continuation and merge of SuSe and Novell's Netware. As far as I know. So I would say it is justifiable marketspeak.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[LnxAddct]

Always install using the distrbution's preferred method of installtion and you'll be fine. With rpm's its very easy to set up menu's etc... In fact, I can't remember the last time a program with a gui wasn't added to my start menu in fedora (without any user interaction).In fedora just use yum and everything is taken care of. Regardless, its not hard to have a program pop up in a menu, netbeans, java, eclipse (iirc), Enemy Territory, are all programs off the top of my head that have always installed flawlessly and added shortcuts despite using custom installers. Don't blame something on the software when in reality its your ignorance. Regardless, just because you're familiar with window's file structure and not linux's doesn't mean it is worse, it just means you don't understand it. I'd be lost as hell in window's file system. In *nix I know where all my binaries are, where all my system binaries are, and where all my conf files are without any problems. Any custom settings per user, I know right where they are too.
Regards,
Steve

Reaching Too Far?

[CarlinWithers]

I think announcing that you plan on tackling MicroSoft head on is a big statement. It means either you're delusional, or you think you have a product that is so much better that no one could resist it. Or maybe a little of both.

I applaud Novell for having the guts to try to tackle MicroSoft. But I think they have their work cut out for them.

Novell is and Suse isn't

[zymano]

Linux Standard Base

Re:A Bad Idea.

[tolan-b]

So you didn't get it from the recommended place?

Personally I haven't seen a major app not put menu items in the apps menu for a couple of years. That is assuming that you get a version of your app for your distribution.

As Dog Food Goes

[soloport]

Last year, by not switching to another platform, Microsoft saved $13.78 Billion in Windows license fees alone.

Re:Novell is and Suse isn't

[SnapShot]

Expand please... I'm a loyal SuSE user (I still use the lowercase 'u' dammit) so is Novell 10 derived from SuSE 9.2 or not? The article seems to imply that it is: "Several of the Linux Desktop 10 features -- including Beagle, F-Spot, Tomboy, an Evolution 2.2 plug in and the Mono developer tools -- will surface in SUSE Linux 9.3, which will be introduced in early April."

The joys of working for a moron

[Entouchable]

Ahh, the joys of working for a moron..

after reading this to the CTO of our company..

cto:"ohh, only 6000 desktops eh??...That's not even a third of the population..."
me:"a third the population of what?..."
cto:"of Windows!"
me: *tries to hold back migraine* >_

Re:The joys of working for a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm Reality. I'm about to deal you a cruel blow, so get ready.

If you're working for the moron, then you're an even bigger moron.

If you need me again, just look in the mirror.

Thanks,

Reality.

Re:The joys of working for a moron

[subgrappler]

so, all the people taking orders from GWB are morons?

Hasn't Microsoft killed Novell yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Novell learned nothing from NetWare, DR DOS, UnixWare?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right because with the Unix file layout you just learn a few things like, /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are the places were executeables that regular users like you, IE as apposed to system admins should find all their executable programs. You don't don't know were OOw is but you know you can find it in one of those two places. You also know whatever you find in there is an executable or a link to one. You don't have to play guess what the file type means. That is so much easier then the widowns world where word.exe might be one place notepad.exe is in another an so on an so forth.

The unix layout is simple and groups things by category, executables, libs, config files, resources such as pixmaps and so on. Windows groups files sometimes by relationship other times by category. IE all files haveing to do with Word are in C:\msoffice executables, libs, and all but contol.exe might be in c:\windows while its libs are with the other libs in windows\system32 or whatever. The win/dos layout is irration you are just used to it. The unix layout makes alot of since so long as application pagagers respect it. Sure it has its limitations but its at least consistant. Windows anything can be anywher and you just have to know where it is which is fine if you are familiar enough to know that but it defies simple explainations.

Ximian Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Always hated it, and I mean really hated it. Installed its own packages. Always seemed like a beta product. Great installation routine, but branded with all their own crap. So now you've got that monstrosity, coupled with Mono....

Re:A Bad Idea.

[sp0rk173]

Any modern distro worth being called a modern distro utilizes something similiar to (if not) famd, which monitors changes in the file system. Since menu entries are indeed entities in the file system, a desktop environment like gnome or kde that utilizes famd will show newly installed programs that create menu entries when they are installed. My experience with this is really limited to gentoo (a power user's distro, so really it needs this feature the least), and it works. Most of the major applications (firefox, openoffice, xchat, gaim, etc) place entries into Gnome's menu that show up immediately after they have been emerged. I assume (and this may not be a good assumption) that if Novell wishes to truely compete with windows they would have this feature well implemented.

However, I would imagine they would try to have the basic programs a home user would need - like a word processor, browser, instant messenger - pre-installed, and provide packages that hook into gnome and/or kde menus automatically for other programs. If you have to install a program yourself, though, in a way that's not standard with the distro you chose...i wouldn't expect the magic of linux to take care of things for you...that's just not the nature of the bastard-child of unix. The same is true for windows. If you download an executable from some random website that doesn't have an installer, it's not going to show up in the start menu until you put it there.

Point simply being, the technology needed for programs to automatically show up in menus after they are installed exists and works. It's just up to distro rollers to properly implement this feature.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Martin Blank]

Your Office installation is broken. It should be in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11. Anything else is not acceptable. Please reformat and reinstall.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember specifically installing Firefox onto one distribution. After I installed it, I couldn't start it! No shortcut, no nothing. I tried to go poking through the file structure to find an executable, but I never found it.

Sounds like you didn't pay attention to where you installed it at. Linux, in it's present state, isn't quite ready for users like yourself. It's good that you went back to Windows 2000, just try not to hurt yourself.

Other than menu icons, what other criteria did you use to judge linux? Total number of screensavers vs. Windows? The visual quality of all of the solitare rip-offs? How giddy the sound themes made you feel?

Seriously, I'm not trying to offend you or anything. I'm sure you're a smart guy. It just seems to me that you're a worthless fucknut, that's all. No offense.

Time is money

[truthsearch]

At any company time is money. It's impossible to switch a corporate desktop with no cost whatsoever. Even a competent SuSE person is going to spend at least a little time installing and setting up a desktop. Time spent on that is time not spend on other corporate work. Even 5 minutes per desktop is a lot when multiplied by 6,000. Hence it costs in terms of man-hours (i.e. productivity not used towards making the company money). And it directly costs money if that person's time is billable to a customer.

Re:Time is money

[superpulpsicle]

But it's not about money. This is Novell here. They have adopted great technology in the past and failed to compete with it.

They had IPX early, which should destroy the first generation of TCP/IP, and it never panned out. Novell Netware was better than many server OS at the time, and it never panned out. You see the pattern here. Novell problem was never about money. They don't know how to deal their cards.

Re:Time is money

[Too Much Noise]

Even 5 minutes per desktop is a lot when multiplied by 6,000.

You're thinking about it the wrong way. You set up an image *once per machine type* (assuming you have several generations of machine with different enough hardware) - then use whatever management software yout IT dept. fancies to push that onto the appropriate desktops. This being Novell, it would mean ZenWorks.

Of course, in the real world things don't go smoothly, but it should be quite below (time per machine) x (no. of machines) in spent time.

Re:Time is money

[mchawi]

In most companies you'll find the main time for that 5 minutes per desktop is lugging it up from receiving and putting it on someone's desk ;)

Even if you use SMS or ZenWorks...it's still 5 minutes per desktop! ;)

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[hawk]

Novell remains the prototypical company that would open up a sushi bar, and advertise it with a sign saying:

"Cold Raw Dead Fish for Sale!"


They were bought out by apple's marketing division?

:)

hawk

Re:A Bad Idea.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

imagine seeing someone click on the firefox icon on the dock, and having the mac sit there for a few seconds as it first mounts the disk image(which is likely placed randomly on the hard drive) with firefox in it, and then starts it.

Ha ha! I've never seen that happen. Most of the .dmg files I get have big text that says "Drag this to your applications folder." I can see how a clueless user would put it in their dock, though and see the behavior you describe. Of course I don't see why the disk image would ever get unmounted. I suppose some users shut down or reboot more often than once a month.

Perhaps there should be a warning (with an option to disable it) for users who try to put a application on a software disk image into the dock. I'm not sure how feasible that is though. I know several people who keep particular sets of files in encrypted disk images, but still have shortcuts to them. Anyone doing that, however, probably can find a user setting to disable the warning.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[DogDude]

It doesn't matter why it doesn't work. The fact is that it doesn't. If Firefox and Thunderbird, two of the best known and most successful Open Source apps don't install correctly, what does that say about the Linux dsektop environment? And, FYI, I tried to use both Firefox/Thunderbird's installers, and the package management system that came with the various distributions. No dice. This is a very, very, very basic operating system fetaure in today's OS's. If I have to hunt around to find an executable, then I may as well be using Windows 3.1. No wait, actually most of those apps installed properly. Hell, other than the various flavors of Linux, I don't know of a modern OS that doesn't handle new applications correctly. Every minute that one takes to try to hunt down an application is wasted time, and that's pretty unacceptable in my opinion.

"due out next year"

[Anonymous Coward]

Too little too late?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[AusG4]

How about having your applications all in /Applications and not have any useless "Start Menu" clone with symlinks to real programs... like on OS X?

Oh, because that would make -sense- ...

Re:A Bad Idea.

[mattyrobinson69]

use kde's "link to application" or whatever gnome calls it.

Plus, unlike windows, all the executables you're going to use are in your path, so you can just put oowriter in a shortcut and it will find it, wherever it is.

Re:Novell is and Suse isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

As NLD 9 was derived from SUSE 9.2, NLD 10 will be derived from SUSE 9.3 (uppercase 'u')

Re:Novell is and Suse isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean 'As NLD 9 was derived from SUSE 9.0'

ARRRGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

And can locate search in files?
Can it make use of meta data?
Can it help you search through all your documents, your email, your IM logs, your browser cache, ... for a specific search term?

It can't? So what is your fucking point?
To show the world that you are such a 1337 hax0r that you can type locate in a terminal? To show how 1337 you are by calling something you don't understand bloat?

Seriously, this has been discussed so many times already and given half a brain it's actually quite easy to see how this kind of technology can be useful, I'm really getting tired of all these "but I'm using locate" trolls.

uli@hobel:~$ locate brain
uli@hobel:~$

Re:ARRRGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

> And can locate search in files?

No but "find" and "grep" are pretty handy.

> Can it make use of meta data?

No but "file" and the appropriate program can, besides "ls" has all these funky options...

> Can it help you search through all your documents,
> your email, your IM logs, your browser cache, ...
> for a specific search term?

Yes it can _help_ but in most of these instances I already know where to look so "grep" is more appropriate.

> To show the world that you are such a 1337
> hax0r that you can type locate in a terminal?

Thankyou, collect your 12 year old card next time you pass go.

> To show how 1337 you are by calling something
> you don't understand bloat?

It is bloat if people aren't going to use it!

You're not saying we should all run X and some silly GUI metasearch? Most people don't need or want these features because the tools we have work fine. What's your big problem with that?

Re:ARRRGH!

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Exactly. I'm not too familiar with current (Windows+Linux) search tools, but a graphical frontend to locate, find, grep etc could do similar.

But of course then you could just as well use a normal search/find dialog (which is perfectly sufficient for me).

If Mac OS Tiger increases its system requirements, I'll keep running the good-ole system I have (10.3).

Re:ARRRGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stupid. A graphical frontend to find and grep would be a billion times slower than an indexing solution like Beagle.

Re:ARRRGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

[s]locate has already indexed the file system.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[fr2asbury]

Besides what everyone else has suggested. You're shell is probably bash, so you can just open a terminal and type "fire" then hit tab twice to see all the options that begin with "fire." Then it's a simple matter of finishing the command. just typing firefox probably would have worked. The other choice would be "firefox-bin" Then you could have done a search to learn how to create a launcher for firefox in your desktop of choice.
In BASH the tab key is my best friend.

Open Source Drama

[Rylz]

From TFA:

but it appears to me that 2005 -- finally -- is going to be the year of the Linux desktop's arrival in corporate America.

Weren't people just talking about how 2004 was the year of the Linux desktop? Odd how people have to be so dramatic about small steps in the right direction...

NLD is nice.

[miffo.swe]

I use it at my laptop right now at work and its nice and easy enough for most people in my opinion. Combine Novell Linux Destop with Novell Open Enterprise and you have a managed enviroment. Heck, combine it with NX Server and you have a full fledged secure terminal server ready to put onto the net ready for outside access. Cant wait for version 10 since it probably will have most of the lessons learned from Novells migration in it.

Actually im doing just that now as a project at work.

Life is good!

Re:A Bad Idea.

[sp0rk173]

Watching a Mac user run Windows or Linux is painful.

Painful? I think it's funny!

Desktop search engines

[Urusai]

I know where my documents are and what they contain. Do people honestly have a problem with this? Or is this rather an attempt to integrate search portals, who sell their rankings for profit? If so, it's like hardwiring www.msn.com as the home page of Internet Explorer--good for profiteers, not good for the end user. Why are so many intelligent IT people backing these stupid bandwagons? Perhaps they really pine for a relational file system and this is a half-baked interim measure.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[DogDude]

Not sure where else I'd get Firefox and Thunderbird, other than the official sites...

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[n8_f]

No, if Apple opened a sushi bar, they would advertise with:

"Look at how white and shiny our rice is!"

Yeah, I bet Microsoft saves a ton too

[melted]

On Windows, Office and MS SQL licensing and support fees. Now for someone from the outside, who Novell will charge through the nose by the hour for support, I bet "savings" will be a lot less substantial.

Re:Yeah, I bet Microsoft saves a ton too

[ckaminski]

It'd be horrible irony if Microsoft ends up having to continue Windows development simply to keep their business running when no one else is using it anymore... :-)

But I like Windows, almost as much as I like SuSE 9.2. In fact, I'm running every version of Windows since 3.1 in a VMware session on Workspace 5. Well, not all at the same time. :-)

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Steven Edwards]

Compare Suse 9.2 to NLD vs Fedora Core 2 vs Fedora Core 3 vs Ubuntu with any modern third party application and you will see that dealing with menus it not that simple. The menu format HAS CHANGED and so I as a application maker have to ship support for how many types of shortcuts?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Genius,

I don't know what distro you used, but it wasn't a modern one. Every GNOME app I've installed within the past two years using my distro's RPM files has created a menu entry.

Regards.

Jesus, will it never end?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you know everything in your files, your mails, your IM conversations, etc.?
Wow, you don't seem to use your computer for much work besides surfing pron, do you?

Is it so hard to imagine that there are people out there with thousands of files, emails, etc, that would love to be able to search through them? Are you really unable to see that this might be useful to them?

Re:Jesus, will it never end?

[Anonymous Coward]

> So you know everything in your files, your mails,
> your IM conversations, etc.?

YES!

File metadata is in the path, filename and filesystem
cat /var/spool/mail/$USER | grep $WHAT
cat /home/$USER/irc_log | grep $WHAT

Beagle link

[DVega]

For those who don't know what Beagle is (like me) here is a link and some demos.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[James Wells]

Greetings,

Not sure what distro's you tried this with, but every one I use and have used over the last 4 years has done this flawlessly on over 95% of the applications that the average user will need.

I recently installed OpenOffice on Suse, Redhat, Fedora, Gentoo, and Slackware... Worked right out of the box.

I recently installed Thunderbird, Sunbird, and Firefox, both just worked right out of the box.

Now to address your commnet a bit better. What you are describing is the same exact issue that caused various companies to create "installers". Believe it or not, it wasn't all that long ago that you had to do the very same thing to get the GUI to show applications in Windows.

Additionally, you are making the assumption that since you had trouble, that the average newbie will as well. Well, guess what... I used to teach true newbies and teaching them how to do what you are talking is very very simple, and the time requirements are almost exactly the same between Winblows and various Linux GUI's.

Finally, I am using KDE to write this, of the over 200 applications in my menu, I had to create the start scripts for exactly 2 of them, MySQLcc and a program I wrote myself to suspend my laptop to disk. So based on that, 99% of the application launchers on my system were created automagically by the system for me. PS. In another post you make a comment about Firefox and Thunderbird being the most sucessful OpenSource projects ever... Please go check your facts, they are sucessful, but not even in the top 10. You want to the see the most sucessful? Check out the HTTP headers on the Slashdot server. ;)

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Logical errors aside, this has to be the finest trolling efforts I have read in quite some time.

Bravo, sir.

I find your zealotry amusing.

[pb]

(a) How do you know he wasn't talking about a $2,000 mac?
(b) For $600, you could get a ... um... 1.42Ghz G4-based mac mini with no monitor, 256MB SDRAM, 32MB video card, 80GB HD, combo drive... aka, something equivalent to the PC I bought from parts a few years ago, for a similar price...
(c) For $2,000, you could get quite a bit more than a 2GHz Pentium; heck, you'd be hard-pressed to find a PC that costs that much these days. Maybe combined with a nice big monitor I guess. :)
(d) Have a nice day!

Re:I find your zealotry amusing.

[jaavaaguru]

Sorry for assuming he wasn't talking about a Mac. Statistically it's likely to be a PC.

I find your assumption of zealotry amusing since I mainly use Sun workstations and PCs, and only use Macs for the occasional presentation/letter/playing music/web surfing. Yeah, I was referring to the Mac Mini which is ideal for most tasks (if you put 512mb RAM in it).

"News for Nerds". What percentage of nerds don't already posess a monitor and keyboard?

Re:I find your zealotry amusing.

[mobilebuddha]

eh.. really, i'm sorry i offended anybody w/ the $2000 for a computer comment.

but jeesus fucking christ, can't we stay away from the my dick is bigger cuz i use a mac vs. my cock is thicker cuz i use a pc comments?

aside from being COMPLETELY OFF-TOPIC, ya beating a horse that died years ago.

Re:I find your zealotry amusing.

[jaavaaguru]

I use everything. Whatever's nearest. I'm lazy.

Anyway, Suns are better than Macs and Peecees. ;-)

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[man_of_mr_e]

I hope you're right. SuSE has always had one big pain in the ass, and that's SuSEConfig. If you go in and edit files manually, it screws things up. This wouldn't be a problem if YaST weren't such a pig to run and you didn't have to outwit it to get the configuration you want.

Novell needs to come up with a truly easy to use configuration interface that doesn't overwrite config files and recognizes hand editing.

Ie, it needs to interpret the config files for each managed service and support all features, and do so without being a pig and taking forever to load.

Basically, if they want people to use their GUI tools, they need to actually work, even if you hand edit the files.

In the news

[ratboot]

Novell claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees [because they installed Novell Linux Desktop]

Also :

Microsoft claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees [because they installed Microsoft Windows]

pretty good return on investment overall

[duderdice]

Looking at it from a business investment point of view, let's find the return on investment. Say it takes a cool $7.2 million to make this transition (6,000 employees spending 40 hours training/learning/downtime @ $30/hr = $7.2 million). Shaving $900K per year pays you back in 8 years ($900K * 8 = $7.2 mil), because those licensing costs they saved are recurring. Using the 'rule of 72' from investing, if we make our money back in 8 years, we're getting roughly 9% return on an investement. That's probably close to the ROI cut off of most businesses, and when you factor in the competitive advantages of

1. not supporting a competitor
2. eating your own dog food and learning from it
3. being on the leading edge of change in the tech industry

sounds like Novell has made a pretty good move. Of course this business case is shot if the costs of transition go thru the roof, but if you do it intelligently (i.e. stepwise, like it sounds they are doing), its easily managed and should be a success. I wish they were hiring, though, because they seem like one of the few companies with a head on its shoulders about how to deal with opportunity and change in this brave new world of Free software. Of course, if my numbers don't convince you, just use common sense - most of the rest of the world is embracing GNU/Linux pretty strongly and if we don't .... well, let's just say "You can pry my Longhorn DVDs from my cold, jobless fingers!"

Re:A Bad Idea.

[pyros]

And, FYI, I tried to use both Firefox/Thunderbird's installers, and the package management system that came with the various distributions. No dice

I'm curious what versions of which distributions, do you recall?

Hell, other than the various flavors of Linux, I don't know of a modern OS that doesn't handle new applications correctly.

None of the major operating systems "handle" new applications by adding menu entries. The installer that you use does that. The Firefox and Thunderbird installers from mozilla.org don't, and it is something they should add, you're right. But the official packages for firefox and thunderbird from all the major distributions I've tried (Fedora 1-3, Ubuntu Warty, Suse 9.1) do add menu entries.

It's nothing specific to the tool being used to do the installation, the user doing the installation, the OS the application is being installed on, or the actual application. The responsibility lies solely with whoever packaged the installation media that you are using.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't attach to the software what is caused by your own ignorance. I am far from a *nix person - my two mainline PCs run Win2K, but I installed Firefox on my Fedora and it put the link right in the menu structure - no fuss, no muss.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[ispepalocacoc]

This probably makes the least amount of sense to me. Anytime I'm using a mac and need to find an application I have to go through a long list of mostly crap I don't need or will never use in the applications folder.

Windows has pretty much the exact same problem and setup... what is the difference between going through the application folder or a start menu...

On linux in both kde and gnome the applications are sorted into groups. "Internet", "Office", "Graphics" etc. etc... and it takes half the time to find any application you want to run. Also, oddly enough everything that I've installed on my system always shows up in these menus... I'm not sure why others have problems.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Angostura]

I'm quite impressed that it even works

Not only Beagle in 9.3.

[Jesus_666]

By the way. Joe Barr reported yesterday that SuSE 9.3 Professional will also include Beagle. Not that you can't download Beagle anyway.

The SUSE (remember that Novell has renamed the distro for no apparent reason) 9.3 flyers distributed at the CeBIT say so, as well. There's a list of new features, among them Linux 2.6.11, KDE 3.4, GNOME 2.10, XEN, Beagle, iPod support, "perfected" bluetooth support, PostgreSQL 8.0... and a strategy game called "Invasion". The last time I've seen a game presented as a great new feature was in that scary Windows ad with Steve Ballmer that's floating around the 'Net...

By the way, according to the dude at the Novell booth, they're going to turn SUSE into a cutting edge distro - when I asked if they wanted to compete with Fedora, he answered that Fedora should first try to catch up. Maybe SUSE will become interesting to those users who like to always have the newest stuff. OTOH Fedora feels a lot cleaner then SuSE 9.0 did - less distro-specificness.

Beagle?

[r_jensen11]

Now, When I hear Beagle in terms of computers, I tend to think of the Beagle virus (That the media idiotically called Bagel.... Apparently they never opened the virus with a HEX editor and found out that it created regestry entries under the name Beagle.... Hopefully the two aren't related....

Re:Beagle?

[WoodSmoke]

Actually, I am fairly certain that the mainstream AV name is Bagle simple because they wanted to irk the virus writers. I wish I could remember the source of that information.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

And herein lies your problem... dumbass

Re:A Bad Idea.

[drooling-dog]

Really? Last time I tried out Linux...

When was that... 1993?

versioning.

[ecalkin]

Novell used to be pretty good about numbering. I think they had difficulties because of the way microsoft numbered their products and then they followed in the same pattern.
Exchange Server 4 was the first version of exchange. It replaced MSMail 3.x which was a completely different product.
Novell started kicking versions of ancillary products up their base os versions. ZEN 4 went to ZEN 6.5 and there were others that did this also.

What amazed me is that they didn't change it to match othe netware version (NLD 6.5/7.0).

eric

Novell Client for Linux?

[Jim Hall]

I wonder if this means Novell is any closer to releasing a Novell Netware Client for Linux? In our shop, lots of people use Fedora Core 1,2,3 - but everyone needs to have access to files on the Novell Netware LAN. Scripts that use NCPFS get us there, but it's kind of a hack (i.e. you need to change the script if we change the server, ...)

Releasing a full Novell Netware Client for Linux has been a planned thing for some time. Maybe NLD 10 will finally get us there?

Re:Novell Client for Linux?

[cdcarter]

Novell has something called LUM (linux user management), it allows linux users to login with their eDirectory usernames and such. Is that what you would like?

Re:Novell Client for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell has an NCP client for Linux in the works, and is showing it at BrainShare. It's in closed beta right now, and supposed to ship late this year.

Re:Novell Client for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

The newer versions of Netware have a pile of methods of connection without using a traditional Novell client. NFS, CIFS, iFolder, and Netstorage are a few.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember, about 6 months ago, there was an app that I wanted to install in windows, and the installer didn't put anything in the start menu. No problem for me, actually, but by your reasoning, what does that say about Windows?
I'd think : the same as your example say about Linux, namely NOTHING.

How is windows different?

[bluGill]

Everytime I get a new machine at work I need to spend a little time setting it up. Doesn't matter if it is FreeBSD, Linux, or Ms Windows, I have to spend some time making it work like I like it.

Companies replace computers often. Generally every 2-3 years, though some go much longer. Companies upgrade Windows often, mixing Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and XP on the desktop is more pain than it is worth, so they standardize on one (or two), and every once in a while migrate everyone to the new one as the old OS looses support for new machines. Once again time is taken setting up those machines.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Shawn Parr]

So why not create subfolders in your Mac's Application folder?

Most Mac OS X apps can be anywhere in the filesystem and still work, so create a folder, say /Applications/Internet and put Safari.app, Mail.app, IE, etc. all in there. Then do the same for any other apps you have.

So a couple apps may have to be outside of that, but I would guess that for most users it is very few (NFS Manager is the only one I can think of that breaks when you move it).

I do this for the University I work for. An Adobe CS folder for those apps, a Macromedia MX folder for all of those, it really helps clean things up. Of course I also make sure that everyone has the main apps (Photoshop, Freehand, etc) on their dock as well.

"Cold Raw Dead Fish for Sale!"

[Anonymous Coward]

is not a problem if they add

Freshly Caught

1)Novell has a user base to transition to linux
2)Novell's certification program is the defacto model of IT certification programs and they still have the good reputation they built with it
3)Desktop aspect for corporate is same application over and over. Flexibility is NOT desireable. You want people doing their work. Novell has plenty of history selling into this market at the small corp level where managers want GOOD and CHEAP.

These managers know a bargain when they see it and will take the time to ask if the fish is fresh.

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[ThePlague]

Or perhaps:

Eat differently

Those numbers don't add up

[theantix]

$900,000/6,000 is $150 per desktop, roughly the cost of a license to upgrade Windows for all 6,000 machines. So are they suggesting that all 6,000 desktops needed to be upgraded in a single year? Or are they including MSOffice costs? That doesn't make sense to me, as that article indicated that most of their workforce had already switched over to OOo -- so the numbers can't fairly include that.

Does it include Windows server licenses? IF so that $900,000 has little to do with the cost saving of moving desktops to Linux and more about moving the entire organization over, which makes the Newsforge and Slashdot headlines quite misleading. I have a feeling that figure meant by switching to their own software, Novell managed to save $900K from their software purchasing budget, and didn't take into account the costs that an outside organization would have to make.

But was anyone actually at the Brainshare session and would care to comment on this? I'd like to know a bit more about where these numbers came from.

Re:Those numbers don't add up

[Anonymous Coward]

I am at BrainShare, and in fact, the week before BrainShare started, was part of a Novell Users International (NUI) group that visited the Novell campus and spoke with Dan Morrison, IT Director of Novell's Global Network Operations Center (GNOC).

Novell has almost entirely dumped M$ Office in favor of OpenOffice. There are still some users, mostly in Sales, Finance and Marketing, who continue to use the M$ products,

Their two main problems have been with laptop support for Linux, and with people who have insanely complex documents or spreadsheets (for timesheets, as an example) that have been difficult to migrate. One lesson learned is to avoid TrueType fonts.

They started with 200 employees dual-booting SUSE/W2K, and by the end of 2005 they plan to have 80% of their workforce, worldwide, totally migrated to Linux (no dual-boot).

Worldwide their front-line tech staff numbers about 100. Novell's total headcount exceeds 6800 people (including temps/interns/contractors).

Other lessons learned include splitting M$O files into 3 groups: Easy to Convert, Not Easy to Convert, and Very Hard To Convert. Start with the easy ones.

As time has gone on, biggest roadblock has become app availability. OpenOffice is great, but AutoCAD isn't on Linux yet, for example (at least that was the example Dan gave). Novell has NOT set a corporate standard of Gnome vs. KDE - users are free to choose what they want (no census data on how many choose which). However, Novell has adopted the OO file formats as their corporate standard.

As for cost, Dan stated their cost has been about $200/user for the migration. Its been taking 20min to 1 hour to imgrate personal settings from Windoze to SUSE.

Re:Those numbers don't add up

[Anonymous Coward]

As an enterprise customer, for the privilege of running Windows + Office we must pay Microsoft in excess of $200 per year per machine.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[DogDude]

I don't remember. I tried Mandrake, SUSE, Ubuntu at the least. One of those (Mandrake?) came with at least Mozilla already installed. The best I can remember was that it was about 6 months ago that I tried Linux last, and of course, I was using all of the most recent versions at the time. That (and a lack of some basic hardware support) was enough to scare me off, since I was looking at it as a possiblity for my business. If I had the time or interest to play with Linux as a hobby, I might've found the apps after the fact, and figured out how to make shortcuts with the GUI.

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[Synn]

Uh... what desktop OS expertise does Novell bring to the table that SuSE didn't already have? The last _desktop_ OS Novell produced was Novel DOS 7. (Or was it 8?)

It's Enterprise experience, not desktop, that is the resource Novell is bringing to the corporate market.

GNOME vs KDE isn't the issue there, it's Enterprise directory services and the ability for Joe User's login account across 2000 computers to be removed the instant the HR department fires him.

It's Virtual Office, iPrint, iFile and the other corporate desktop user orientied services that they offer.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[rpdillon]

It doesn't matter why it doesn't work. The fact is that it doesn't.

Actually, it does work. Which "various flavors" have you tried? The whole post sounds like pebkac. I've been using Linux for 6 years, including Red Hat since 6.1, Gentoo, SuSe 9 (various versions), Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora Core 1, 2 and 3, Debian Woody and Sarge, and none of those ever had me "hunting" through the filesystem for an executable.

I am also suspicious that your posts contain no actual references to anything specific, like a specific operating system, or a specific method of install. What I'm assuming happened was you installed something without using a package management system. This will result in a few things: the program won't be registered with the install system, so you can have problems if you go back and install the same thing through the package manager, it makes removal difficult, and it can be hard to track down where executables are so you can create icons (and they sure won't be created for you!). But, as with Windows (or ANY operating system), if you don't use an installer the OS recognizes, there is a liklihood that no icons will be installed.

There are lots of legitimate gripes about Linux on the desktop, and various issues the community needs to deal with to make it ready for mainstream use, but icon addition to menus was nailed down years ago.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[mattyrobinson69]

I was talking about desktop shortcuts, or kicker shortcuts.

For menu shortcuts, thats a problem for the distributor when they create native packages of your application.

TCO arument

[mpcooke3]

Buying SUSE and claiming they are saving money on software licenses!

Perhaps i could save money on my Windows licenses by buying Microsoft ;)

linux is just like an embedded OS

[xpyr]

where you can only run the applications that come from your vendor, can't run third party programs without having to modify them to work with the distro. If you want a newer version of an app and your distro hasn't released a package of the app for their distribution, then u can either try installing from the official sources, including some extra steps that the distro would normally need to do such as adding icons to the programs menu that you now need to do yourself.

Windows has all this already. I wish linux would stop being treated like an embedded OS and instead be treated like an OS that windows is where there is one installer for all windows versions that doesn't need to be adjusted to work with them all, it just does. That's the main advantage windows has and one that I'd love it if linux had it.

I do remember when windows applications didn't have an uninstall program and you had to go in and delete all the files that were copied onto your hard drive including shortcuts. That's where linux is at. It needs to have the ability to install any program with any distro and be able to remove that program easily if necessary.

I do know that when compiling and installing from source, some programs have a removal feature as well which is great. So it's a start.

The packaging systems are just there to lock the users in, nothing more.

Re:linux is just like an embedded OS

[manitoulinnerd]

first off..... wow and on so many levels
You sir, unfortunately are stuck in a Windows frame of mind.

There are different ways of installing programs in a unix environment. The first, more efficient and sometimes more complex way is to install it into you system structure directly. What this does is it copis binary's into the /bin and /usr/bin directories and generally uses shared libraries included in your system. This method generally has dependencies and can be harder to remove.

The second way to install programs is in the /opt directory. Here everything the program needs is installed and it generally doesn't have any dependencies. To uninstall from here you need simply to delete the directory.

Personal configuration files are stored in a hidden file in your home directory in both cases.

Management of the second is quite easy and different programs will include their own installers. Uninstallers are really necessary in windows because of the registry (which is a bad idea poorly implemented)

Management of the first method is sometimes more complex. That does not mean it is impossible and there are several tools to do some. Some distro's have their own tools and the makefile system can also be used.

I suggest doing some research into unix philosophies. The more I learn the more I am impressed. I am sure you will be too!

Re:linux is just like an embedded OS

[xpyr]

You sir, unfortunately are stuck in a Windows frame of mind.

I just find windows a whole lot easier to manage, thats all.

There are different ways of installing programs in a unix environment. The first, more efficient and sometimes more complex way is to install it into you system structure directly. What this does is it copis binary's into the /bin and /usr/bin directories and generally uses shared libraries included in your system. This method generally has dependencies and can be harder to remove.

Sounds just like what windows components in add/remove programs does. But why do I have thousands of packages to choose from. If someo of those packages are just dependencies for other packages and don't serve any oher purpose other then that, why am I allowed to install them by themselves? Linux really needs to simplify the grouping of its components of its OS if it wants to continue using the package management system. It'll have the same amount of packages, the user will just have an easier time adding and removing features from their OS like they can in windows. For example, if you want to install vi, u shouldn't have the option to install vi libraries as well. You should have just vi their to add or remove. This will then add or remove any dependencies that vi has.

The second way to install programs is in the /opt directory. Here everything the program needs is installed and it generally doesn't have any dependencies. To uninstall from here you need simply to delete the directory.

And what about the symbolic links that the program may need to create to add itself to the programs menu in kde or gnome, whichever one the user is using at the time.

Uninstallers are really necessary in windows because of the registry (which is a bad idea poorly implemented)

I still prefer having an uninstaller that makes it just as easy to remove a program as it is to install it. Having to go through the directory structure I think shouldn't be necessary if you want to remove a program. An uninstaller for the program is so much more simpler because it does all the work for you.

Some distro's have their own tools and the makefile system can also be used.

I mentioned the makefile system, though not using those words when I mentioned that compiling, installing and removing programs from source can be easy to do.

I suggest doing some research into unix philosophies. The more I learn the more I am impressed. I am sure you will be too!

The Unix system was invented back in the 60's. It's time for it to modernize. You mentioned that there is /usr/bin and /bin/ in the unix/linux file system. Those were originally there because of the limited storage space at the time since some programs could be offloaded onto tape and only loaded up if needed to. Their is a linux project out their to modernize the file system. Let's hope it succeeds.

Re:linux is just like an embedded OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for yet another link to give people when they look surprised that I don't get up and dance at news regarding further penetration of linux into USER space.

deb vs. rpm

[tepples]

The whole post sounds like pebkac.

The point is that unlike common practice in packaging GNU/Linux programs, common practice in packaging Windows programs prevents pebkac.

What I'm assuming happened was you installed something without using a package management system.

Which package management system works on both Fedora-based distros and Debian-based distros? Or do you expect all distributors to use twice the space to ship .rpm and .deb packages?

But, as with Windows (or ANY operating system), if you don't use an installer the OS recognizes, there is a liklihood that no icons will be installed.

Here, the difference is that unlike for GNU/Linux, there is one well-known method for an installer to register itself with Windows.

Re:deb vs. rpm

[rpdillon]

Windows in no way prevents pebkac. You're talking about an OS that has, until recently, had no notion of a user without administrator priviledges. Microsoft has yet to to produce a version of Windows that does not set a user as an administrator by default. Windows is pebkac heaven. And Microsoft has no excuse; *nix has had the notion of unpriviledged users since the 70's.

Next...package management. Most (but not all) mainstream programs already exist in good package management respositories. Debian has their own, Gentoo has their own, even Red Hat and SuSe have their own. This doesn't require the vendor of the product to do anything. The Mozilla foundation doesn't produce .deb, .ebuild and .rpm packages, and yet I can install Firefox and Thunderbird with no problem on all the above operating systems.

Oh, and to answer your question, apt-get works on both Fedora-based and Debian-based distros. Oh, and on Debian, I can use alien to install RPMs. Not that it matters, since they're different operating systems. This is like complaining that Windows and Mac OS X don't use the same installer. You pick an OS, you pick an installer.

So...I'm not really sure what you're saying. There IS one well known method for installation for each Linux operating system, and the makers of the OS use it, and (most times) provide packages through that system, whether it be portage, apt-get, yum, yast, up2date, or whatever.

You are errant in treating "GNU/Linux" as a single operating system. It isn't. SuSe is a single OS, Red Hat is a single OS, Debian is a single OS, Gentoo is a single OS. And they each have a way to install Firefox and Thunderbird that "just works", and is in fact quite superior to anything Windows offers, or ever has offered.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[delire]

Watching a Mac user run Windows or Linux is painful. They try to move or delete programs and just can't understand why it doesn't work.

Surely then you'd find it equally painful that I, like so many, 'find' the Finder totally confusing, as though all applications are somehow lost in the first place.

From my perspective, and for many other OS9.2 fans, OSX is an abomination of useability, sad but true. It's just what you get used to. For me the ability to 'delete and move applications' is a foolish, illusory and double-edged 'feature'. Wantonly deleting executables themselves makes a horrific mess, I would rather see everyday users (like my sister for instance) get used to the idea of purging unwanted software, something she says she actually enjoys doing on her SUSE Linux system, largely because "I know it's gone" - this was something she couldn't stand about Windows for instance, left overs all over the place. Secondly, a symlink is a convenient shortcut - however the way OSX organises it, many users mistake it for the thing itself. Personally, part of having a clean and sensible system is knowing what's a symlink and what is not.

As an example, I gave a 3D modelling workshop on OSX and Linux machines recently, what a mess these poor OSX users had made of their machines - people running software out of *.dmg's, 2 different /Application folders and whatever. One poor chap told me the software he'd installed "was on the hard disk, not on the desktop". When I explained that the Desktop was also 'on the hard disk', but that the hard-disk he was referring to was just an icon linking to a location on his hard disk, he said "I really hate this". Simply put, how many OSX users actually know their system begins at '/'? At least with any modern Linux desktop you can see it right there in the file browser. From an educational perspective, I'd far rather maintain Linux desktops than OSX - what a mess.

Sometimes a little transparency doesn't hurt - if useability == 'keep them stupid', then I want less 'useable' machines. After all, let them know what they're fscking up - call them stupid if they do it a second time.

Re:You can put a dog to sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to rape your mother faggot

Re:A Bad Idea.

[PeelBoy]

What? Thats the stupidest thing I ever heard..

As far as the END USER cares its a fucking ICON.

You click on it and the program OPENS..

They don't know about all the .lnk, .desktop business. WTF makes you think THAT matters? Shit most people dont even know what a short cut is. They probably think that stupid icon IS the program.

It doesn't matter if linux has 20 ways of doing this and they are all confusing..

The end result is still the same.

You have an icon.. you click on it.. your program opens..

BIG FUCKING DEAL

Re:A Bad Idea.

[sp0rk173]

Can't speak for mandrake, but i know for a fact that SuSE and Ubuntu both come with firefox installed by default.

If I had the time or interest to play with Linux as a hobby, I might've found the apps after the fact, and figured out how to make shortcuts with the GUI.

It's very difficult, actually. First, you open up the menu of KDE or Gnome. Next you click and hold on the icon of the program you wish to put a "shortcut" to. Then you drag it from the menu to the desktop area, or the new pannel/kicker you've created to hold the afformentioned shortcut. Finally you release the mouse button. Very, very difficult.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Steven Edwards]

"For menu shortcuts, thats a problem for the distributor when they create native packages of your application." I am talking about desktop shortcuts as well. The company I work for makes a product that runs on linux and we have distributed our product for quite a few years now and its not as simple as you make it out to be. Each distro has done menus in slightly different ways and while the format of the *.desktop file has been mostly constant the locations of the the files and the functionality for say REFRESHING the stupid kicker or foot differs slight with each minor rev of the desktop or distro you are talking about.

SuSE X.... SuSe X... suSE X... s u SEX

[Anonymous Coward]

The roman numeral adds greatly to the version.

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[dr.badass]

Linux is doing just fine on the back end, but on the desktop right now the only real "alternative" is Apple - we need a good Linux-based Third Option to really start nibbling away at Windows.

The trouble is that few distributions have the balls to claim that that they are that good third option. "Linux" is too broad a thing, distributions need to define and differentiate themselves -- I'm glad to see Novell taking that step, and I hope more distributions will try to do the same.

Free?

[nurb432]

Will there be a free version too, or just something for 'paying customers' as is tradional for Novell.

Not slamming them, but if they also release a free version for us people at home would help in market penetration at the office...

No formal training needed for many

[MavenW]

I am one of the employees of Novell that moved to Linux last year. There was no formal training needed. Sure there was some installation and learning time, but there isn't anyone in my department that can't learn that stuff faster either by doing it once, or by asking the guy across the hall a couple of questions. Besides, for those of us who learned Unix and/or DOS while in college, we just had to dig a lot of it out of our memories.

I'd say the total time ($$) spent and training needed was comparable to upgrading from Windows 98 to 2000, or 2000 to XP.

Some of the engineers here kept one box with Windows or dual boot. Because there's usually one or two things that Linux just hasn't got right yet. I myself am totally Microsoft Free. There was one time when I borrowed a Windows box from a colleague because I was too lazy to get my Linux box to do the job. I think it was an expense report or something.

Another thing that might muddle the training cost issue is the fact that we have tons of lab machines. Right now I have 9 boxes in my office, running SUSE Linux in various flavors. Seven of them have the Windows 98/2000 certificate stickers still on them, despite being wiped clean when I installed Linux. But that's only because I scavanged most of them from the surplus closet and the outdated testing machines rack. Due to the better performance of Linux over Windows, I can use older boxes for my developement lab machines. In past years when the manager would say, "We're making out our budget for the next year. How many Microsoft licenses are we going to need?" I would have had to count up my lab machines and give him a total. This time it was pretty easy. The total formal training needed for all those machines to switch from Windows to Linux was zero. And since the product I'm working on is Linux based, and part of the testing I do includes installation, the time spent "moving to Linux" is also zero.

I thought maybe I had more machines in my office than the average, but I went down the hall and asked some of the other engineers, and I'm barely even in the top half. Not to mention the testing rack outside my office with 32 easily identifiable boxes.

Desktop Switch?

[nurb432]

From what has been said, they both are already in the process of switching desktops..

Maybe they are ...

[NullProg]

trying to be like these people:

Novell Public Service Announcement

Enjoy,

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Slack3r78]

You apparently don't understand how Applications are handled in OS X. You're not 'wantonly deleting executables,' you're moving and deleting the entire application. The Application you see (an .app) is really just a container.

If you drop out to the CLI and take a look at .apps, you'll find that they're just a directory that the GUI in OS X treats like a single file. Inside is the entire directory tree for the program and all its files, but the user (as you've clearly demonstrated) doesn't have to know this, because there's no need for them to know about it.

To me, it's a great example of transparency done right. You've just been engrained with the idea that files are scattered everywhere and need to be purged, as you put it. That's not the case at all. It's not a matter of dumbing down so much as abstracting things that don't really serve the user any better spelled out. *THAT'S* why it's 'Applications' and not '/Applications.'

Time to test Mono in court...

[sadler121]

I guess with the inclusion of Mono with in NLD 10 we are going to see Microsoft take them to court over IP concerns. Wonder if Novell could handle a nice lawsuit from Redmond?

If they cant, Utah County is down another tech company sense SCO is all but defeated...

Lucene based search engine

[Tincan2k]

Shameless self plug. I've been working on a Lucene based OSS desktop search engine in pure java named Nariva http://nariva.sf.net/ that incorporates some additional Apache software projects to provide stuff like a XML-RPC interface to the engine.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Random832]

su
mkdir /Program Files
mkdir /Program Files/oowriter
mv /usr/bin/oowriter /Program Files/oowriter

--user expects [BAD] /Program Files/ /Program Files/oowriter/ /Program Files/oowriter/oowriter

--user gets [WORSE] ./Files/ ./Files/oowriter/Program/ ./Files/oowriter/oowriter

Separate operating systems with separate shells

[tepples]

One major difference here is that the various operating systems called GNU/Linux doesn't have a unified file manager. An app would have to install menu shortcuts for GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and possibly more, unlike Windows which has Explorer.exe on well over 95 percent of machines reading from the same Start Menu folder.

Oh, and on Debian, I can use alien to install RPMs. Not that it matters, since they're different operating systems. This is like complaining that Windows and Mac OS X don't use the same installer.

The difference is that Fedora on x86 and Debian on x86 have the same ABI, or nearly so. Mac OS X is less than perfectly relevant here because it's PowerPC only, and the vast majority of Fedora and Debian installations are on x86 architecture.

You are errant in treating "GNU/Linux" as a single operating system. It isn't. SuSe is a single OS, Red Hat is a single OS, Debian is a single OS, Gentoo is a single OS.

Arguably, Windows ME and Windows XP are separate operating systems even more than the different GNU/Linux systems are. Another way of looking at it: How would a company justify paying for server space to hold multiple distributions' binaries vs. server space to hold one set of binaries that works on Windows 98/ME and 2000/XP?

Re:Separate operating systems with separate shells

[rpdillon]

If that final question is really the driver here, I think it is kind of moot.

Storage is dirt cheap. A 300GB drive would only run a couple hundred dollars. Since bandwidth usage would remain the same (each OS will only be downloading once, regardless of which copy they were downloading), and you can store images for every pseudo-mainstream Linux distribution on the planet on a 300GB drive, I don't think they *have* to justify spending the money. The time you'd spend justifying it would cost more than just buying the hardware.

No TCO analysis is going to pit the costs of hosting application binaries for 3 versions of Linux against hosting only one version for Windows...your whole set up is a specious argument. Disk space is simply not a limiting factor.

This next comment is not intended to be rude, but to inform: there is a big difference between a "shell" (in your topic), a "file manager" (in your first line), and a window manager/desktop environment (seperate in concept, sometimes combined in practice). A shell is an interface through which you access your system on a command line (sh, csh, bash, tcsh). A "file manager" is a tool used to manipulate files (which is irrelevant to this discussion), but it so happens that in Windows, the file manager is the same executable as its window manager, and its desktop environment. You may be confused because what is called a "shell" under Windows is in fact a window manager and desktop environment under Linux. Window managers are things like KWM, Sawfish, EvilWM, Ratpoison, etc. Desktop environments are things like GNOME and KDE.

Your central point, however, is correct, though a bit passe. Most desktop environments (programs that provide the equivalent of a "Start Menu") are readily capable of reading each others settings and automagically migrating menu items back and forth. In case something was missed, most have an automated program that can scour the system for new programs and add them automatically.

Re:Separate operating systems with separate shells

[tepples]

Storage is dirt cheap. A 300GB drive would only run a couple hundred dollars.

Add redundant backup, electricity, cooling, real estate, staffing, and markup, and a 300GB drive in a datacenter costs a bit more than a 300GB drive in your home computer.

Re:Separate operating systems with separate shells

[rpdillon]

Yes, but no more than a 150GB in the same place. Drive space is cheap, and storing two copies of a 13 MB file is not very different from storing one copy. I never asserted that it cost the same as it does in a home computer. I said it was cheap, and was therefore not a driving factor in any company's choice of OS.

Are you disgareeing with that point, or are you looking for an interpretation of my posts that you can argue with?

Re:Separate operating systems with separate shells

[LnxAddct]

I must apoligize for starting this thread (I'm the grand grand grand grand... parent) ... but thank you for continuously destroying the troll's arguments. I try not to bite troll bait to often, but you did a good job of shutting him up :) Thanks.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Separate operating systems with separate shells

[lahvak]

One major difference here is that the various operating systems called GNU/Linux doesn't have a unified file manager. An app would have to install menu shortcuts for GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and possibly more, unlike Windows which has Explorer.exe on well over 95 percent of machines reading from the same Start Menu folder.

You just made an interesting point. You see, I hate Explorer.exe. I think it is one of the worst graphical environments in existence. In fact, I have tried several times to replace it by something else. There are so called "shell replacements" for windows, and many of them provide much better environment than Explorer.exe does. The reason I don't use one is I don't have time to set them up and configure them. Every major linux ditro has a wide choice of desktop environment, starting with very simple window managers to complete desktop systems like Gnome, KDE or xcfe. And on every linux system I have used in the last 4 years or so, all those come completely configured, with nearly all applications in menus, icon boxes or whatever. You just choose which desktop environment/window manager you want to use, and you are in business. Compare this with installing say litestep or blackbox on windows, and spending several hours searching for applications, creating menus, keyboard shortcuts etc.

During about 10 years of using linux, I have had to search for an application once, when several kde programs I compiled from source installed themselves in /usr/local/kde for come braindead reason. I didn't pay attention when configuring and installing the programs (because typically you don't have to), so it took me a while to find what was going on.

There is whole bunch of third party applications for windows that are distributed as zip files rather than executable installers. For those, you have to create the menus and icons yourself.

Finally, one big thing that always drives me nuts on windows is the lack of sensible hierarchy in the main menu. On linux, I have all editors in Applications->Editors, all graphics stuff in Applications->Graphics etc. On windows I have one giant main menu with everything on it, and if things are grouped into sub-menus, they are usually grouped and labeled by the name of the company that makes the software, which is completely useles.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[iowannaski]

This advice, while well intentioned, is absolutely useless. You are basically saying, "Just move all of your applications. Only a couple of them will break, although I don't know which ones those will be."

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Doyle]

On a side note: it bugs me how Debian installs some app launchers in a "Debian Menu" sub-menu in Gnome, but others go in the main menu. Makes it hard to find stuff sometimes. :-/

Because this isn't the first Slashdot article?

[cbreaker]

Just a theory...

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat differently

Your grammar is too proper. It's, "Eat different".

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[garroo]

They were bought out by apple's marketing division?

No, No, No... they were bought out by IBM's maketing division.... Get it right!!!!

Re:You can put a dog to sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

Google some info on hospice care for the dying. Cease both food and water and the person will shut down quickly. In fact, continuing IV fluids when the pt cannot voluntarily function can prolong the process and pt suffering.
My father, who unlike Terry Dumbshit HAD a living will, died with out intervention, peacefully over days, his way, on his terms. I watched it happen.

Hidden Training Costs

[chill]

That is actually a complicated question. Most people assume that there are no training costs/issues with Microsoft upgrades, whether Office or the OS and that is just wrong.

At the companies I've been at, there were training issues and costs when going from Win2K/Win98 on the desktop to WinXP. There are also recurring costs with MS Office training, and major training costs associated with upgrading from Office 97 to Office 2003.

Saying that there are training costs when tranistioning from MS Office to OOo or from Windows to Linux usually doesn't take all that into account. There are training costs from MS to MS as well, and they aren't necessarily cheaper.

-Charles

Watch the video and mod parent up ...

[kabz]

That's a really funny skit. It kinda reminds me of the early days of the mac when we all hung on the every word of Steve Jobs ...

errr, but wait ...

Re:Watch the video and mod parent up ...

[Pecisk]

Yeah, it is quite up to smart geek humor, but it can touch the irony strings in every boss I know too. Good to see that Novell doesn't have to be learnt how to make some funny PR stunts.

Is this also flamebait?

[cfalcon]

The gp makes a comment that is clearly intended to be funny. The gag, oft repeated, is that the server is slashdotted. That's all it says, if you actually fucking read it. I saw it modded flamebait, and queried. Then THAT got modded flamebait, the innocent query. Why didn't the mod just fucking post why he thought it was flamebait in response to my valid question? You know, given that it isn't, and you might only think that if the reference to Linux is taken as a flame. Which, uh, it isn't.

Here's praying the metamods tear these flamebait mods up.

Why would any Novell employee ever use MS Office!?

[Scott7477]

I don't understand why any Novell owned PC would ever have had MS Office products on it. Surely WordPerfect and QuattroPro have been functional products all of these years. Since Novell had been for quite a while an opponent of MS desktop products, any employee who even submitted a purchase order with a MS Office product on it should have been fired on the spot.
If they had forgotten about WP and QP, they could have bought Lotus SmartSuites....

Re:Why would any Novell employee ever use MS Offic

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Novell employees objected strongly when Novell moved from WordPerfect to MS Word. The reason it had to be done was that Novell's customers were pretty much all running Word and so Novell was not able to exchange documents with them. The automatic document conversion between the two just wasn't good enough.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[lahvak]

Actually, I think it puts ALL the launchers in the Debian Menu (which is just the standard debian menu in gnome format). Some of them are then selected for the main Gnome menu, mostly the ones that are part of the Gnome environment. I wish there was a way to replace the main Gnome menu with the standard debian one.

That's the point

[schmobag]

You can do all that in Linux. That's the whole point of Novell's ZENWorks product.

Re:That's the point

[jabuzz]

I was not questioning the fact that it can be done in Linux. I was mearly pointing out that it can be done under Windows, and that anyone managing a large number of computers under either Windows or Linux is not doing their job correctly if they are visiting individual computers to install software. A point the parent post seemed to be missing.

wrong link

[schmobag]

should have been this.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually none will break if you're using OSX... its kinda nice that way...

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now, Novell is in a unique situation. Since they own SuSE they don't have to pay SuSE license fees, so i'm sure that saves them a chunk of change, and they don't have to purchase service contracts because they're their own service facility."

I would not bet on that. Very often (don't know specifics about novell) Internal support vs external support to paying customers are not the same. Look at Cisco for example, they were broken in to and some of their source code stolen, what the point? They sell security solutions but outsource security.

BIG ditto !!

[Macka]

Man, I so totally agree with you on that one. I've not used SuSE since 7.2, so I've no idea if its improved, but SuSEConfig was something I learned to hate. And why did Yast always insist on reconfiguring every dam component when all I did was update one tiny part of it.

In contrast, I really like Redhat's organisation of rc files. Everything under /etc/sysconfig and hand editable.

Re:BIG ditto !!

[sbryant]

FYI... SuSE uses /etc/sysconfig too. I think they introduced it in 8.0. That made changing stuff much simpler.

However, running through all the conf.d scripts everytime you add a new package is annoying - especially on a slow machine. They should at least modify the scripts to check the timestamp of their config (in) files against the generated config (out) files, and exit straight away if nothing's newer. Maybe some do, but it doesn't seem like it to me (and I can't check now).

While they're at it, they should hack insserv to generate a Makefile, and have init use make to start/stop services, as somebody already did. That'd speed up the boot/shutdown sequence somewhat.

-- Steve

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...I recently installed...Gentoo... Worked right out of the box..."

Your lucky. The recent Gentoo PPC version was a disaster. When the 2004.3 came out I did an update on my PowerBook G4. The update crash and burned so bad I had to reinstall. And the change in the udev/devfs thing was not reflected in installation documentation resulting in wrong kernel settings. A week later I was still trying to get things I had working before up and going. I had to give up on the sound.

But with all that trouble, I'm still happy to have it.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Pecisk]

Yeah, I agree, such kind of system under Linux/Unix sistems (under freedesktop.org spec, for example) would be great. Actually it could be such directory with bunch directories, which actually would have bunch of .desktop files and some spec files - where the real files go, for example, so it could stay with touch with old /usr/bin system.

I think it could be done.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Pecisk]

Good to hear that some real Windows sysadmin has tried Linux distro like NLD and found it working for him. Wish you luck in Linux world. :)

Beagle version and Chiefs

[Baramin]

I hope they won't base their marketing on that Beagle thing, as your average IT executive might be tempted to think that a software at version 0.0.7 is probably crap (no matter how polished it might be in reality, I don't use Beagle, so I wouldn't know).

Firefox 0.9 had a hard time getting into enterprises because, among other reasons, of its sub-1.x version level, I can't imagine how a 0.0.7 version number can provide the sensation of security/safety needed to be a good pro-NLD10 argument.

Ps: sorry about my bad english, hope this makes sense.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[delire]

You're right, I didn't know that .app was just a container, I suppose that keeps things tidier. I still don't see why this system is in place though, what's wrong with a menu rather than click click clicking through folders to find things.. Students I teach have several different installations of the same software on their machines, some in 'Applications' and others in '/usr/bin' - they don't seem to know what's on their machines and where, and it frustrates them. Their own filesystem is a messy mental image, and they don't know how it got that way.

I don't see this .app as anything of an innovation - especially from a useability perspective - really, there's nothing wrong with the system as it stands; install something and find it in the menu or CLI immediately. Is it ease of use or laziness we're trying to encourage here?

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, updaters and Software Update will break. For latest examples, see Pages and Keynote.

Interesting Novel

[harryoyster]

Up until very recently we have been using Redhat Enterprise linux across the board and having to use a shitty NIS+ setup for authentication. Now we are using Novel Open Enterprise Server with the directory services across the board. Thanks to novel we can finally have a TRUE enterprise solution, one that has directory services, one that has a good QA model and so far we have not had any issues even though the prodocut is still in a "beta" state. Go novel.

So true

[godless dave]

Odd how people have to be so dramatic about small steps in the right direction...

So true, and not just about software. I think Chuck D said it best:

"Don't believe the hype".

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Total_Wimp]

"You're not 'wantonly deleting executables,' you're moving and deleting the entire application."

I'm curious how accurate this is. Are there no no libraries or .DLL equivilants that are installed in another location? Are there no configuration settings in the equivilant of a registry that must be removed?

This is a genuine question and I hope you have the time to answer. If you happen to have a link lying around to some place on the web that discusses the topic ('OS X + applications' does not yield useful results on google) I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
TW

Re:If anyone can do it, Novell can. But can they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what Novell would prefer is that you use their linux desktop management interface in Zenworks to remotely configure the entire OS.

This is "Corporate" Linux Desktop we're talking about. Don't assume it's aimed at the home, or the enthusiast market.

In a corporate environment, having to visit each machine is a waste of time... doing it all remotely, by assigning a policy to a workstation object, is far preferable.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Are there no no libraries or .DLL equivilants that are installed in another location? Are there no configuration settings in the equivilant of a registry that must be removed?

It is pretty accurate. Applications may link to standard libraries on the system, but any others are included in the package. OS X handles them very intelligently, with versioning. Dot fixes to a library that are included in another application will be used by older applications (thus adding one new program can improve the performance of existing applications.) Major version changes in libraries are not linked to since it would cause compatibility issues. Preference files are XML and are stored in the /Library or ~/Library folder and linking is dynamic.

The upshot of all of this is you can drag a normal OS X application anywhere on your hard drive, and it will work just fine. If you toss it in the trash, it will be gone. Your preference file normally remains, which is convenient since it means if you reinstall the program or replace it with a newer version you will still have your preferences. The paranoid should take care to remove the preferences file when they delete an application. (otherwise someone with access to their account might know what color terminal windows they like.)

Someone earlier mentioned users being confused by applications in /usr/bin. I can see where this would be confusing to someone who does not know UNIX, but there is not really any need for a newbie to touch anything in /usr/bin. It contains all the legacy BSD applications which are a huge boon to people who are already UNIX saavy, but are a usability nightmare for anyone else. If you're planning on using apps from /usr/bin or any of the other legacy locations, you'd do well to familiarize yourself with the system organization.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[ookaze]

Like which OS ?
You mean that with your solution, I can have displays of my web browsers in a menu, like "Navigateur Web Galeon" or "Navigateur Web Epiphany" (I'm french) ?
Because that is what I have NOW in Gnome and KDE, and it does not even use symlinks to real programs.

It does not make any sense to me, I think you are too English-speaking centric, that is a major flaw of most of these arguments.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[ookaze]

None of my newbie users that use Linux have the problem you describe. They NEVER wonder where their programs are. I'm not a newbie and I never wonder on such things, actually, I don't care.

Want oowriter ?
The newbies just launch "Execute ..." in the Gnome or KDE menus, and type the executable name. The executable name is even dynamically completed.
Same thing on the CLI, type the command, or type the beginning of the command, and TAB. If not one answer, type TAB again, and complete according to the list shown to you.

Linux is not Windows, such things are trivial on Linux desktops and OS, you do not even need to care about them.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

what's wrong with a menu rather than click click clicking through folders to find things.

Here's a tip for you: drag your applications folder into the dock. If you click once it opens the folder. If you right-click or click and hold the button down it works as a contextual menu (just like the start menu in windows).

Students I teach have several different installations of the same software on their machines, some in 'Applications' and others in '/usr/bin' - they don't seem to know what's on their machines and where, and it frustrates them.

You need to spend some time learning the system if you plan to teach on it. It isn't really very hard. BSD subsystem applications install in all the same old confusing locations as they always have in BSD, Linux, etc. OS X applications go wherever you put them. Pre-installed OS X apps are in the Applications folder and it is a good place to keep new ones.

Personally, I've never run across anyone who understands the basic UNIX CLI commands, that has not instantly figured out OS X when I said, "The OS X GUI applications are in the Applications folder." Every UNIX guy I know grokked it at that point.

I don't see this .app as anything of an innovation - especially from a useability perspective - really, there's nothing wrong with the system as it stands;

Here's what's wrong with the old system. You have to run a binary to install most basic applications. You have to run another to delete the application. An application's resources are stored in an arbitrary location. Applications break if you move them. Uninstallers don't always work properly. You have to trust both the installer and the uninstaller not just the application itself (two extra vectors for trojans). Uninstalling an application and installing a new version destroys your preferences if done properly. Uninstalling an application can break another due to shared libraries. It is often difficult for multiple versions of the same application to co-exist (they have a tendency to try to use the same resources). Finally, you can't easily move applications from one computer to another or back them up.

All of those problems are solved with the .app method. I'm in control. If I want to install an application, I drag it where I want it. I don't have to worry that it will create random files all over my hard drive. I don't have to worry if the uninstaller will work. If I want to look at an image or listen to a sound used by one of my applications, I just navigate into it and look in the resources folder. This is also cool for easily customizing applications. Since the applications are self contained if a friend wants one, you just share the one file. Backing up applications has never been easier and I don't know any other systems where you can just send someone an application via AIM and have it just work.

...install something and find it in the menu or CLI immediately.

And this differs from OS X how? On OS X you drag the file where you want it, and it is there in all your menus, windows, and the CLI. Heck, when using the default terminal you can drag a folder you are navigated into to another location, and the terminal does not get confused at all. I guess the problem I'm hearing from you is twofold. First, you can't remember where you put your programs. Second, you want a start menu just like windows has. For the first one, put them in the same place. For the second, make a menu already. It takes about 30 seconds to build a custom one.

OK, here is one last tip for you. Get quicksilver. you won't care where any of your applications are. You hit cntrl-space type 1-3 letters and enter. It is so much faster than anything else you'll be amazed. It is the best of tab completion combined with the ease of the GUI.

Re:A Bad Idea.

[Total_Wimp]

Thanks for the info. This helps a lot.

TW

Re:A Bad Idea.

[delire]

Thanks for all the advice, it does clear a few things up. I'll pass that on to my students if they become confused. I only use OSX as a part of my day job and enjoy using a Linux DE as my productivity desktop (especially for 3D animation/modelling/game development). Regardless OSX isn't free and is too hardware dependent to be useful to me.

It seems you are talking about MS Windows when discussing files being thrown around the place on an uninstall. This is not the case on a modern Linux system where software can be easily and cleanly purged in it's entirety using the onboard package manager. If software is compiled I generally run it out of an archive/folder in my ~/ but generally speaking I dislike this. That said it's easy to make an 'Applications' dir in ~/ and put that dir within one's path - so it appears in the menu and CLI.